


Hope Thought Lost

by JackAmatus (StellaDraco)



Series: Desert Heat [1]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Betrayal, Coercion, Dark, Depression, Drama, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Gambling, Hope vs. Despair, Implied/ Referenced Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Las Vegas, Lies, Medical, Misunderstandings, Multi, Not really friendly to friends to lovers, Past Drug Addiction, Prostitution, Rape, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Threats, Vice, drunken antics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 17:54:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 69,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9669692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaDraco/pseuds/JackAmatus
Summary: *I DON'T WARN OF MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH*  Across all works.  Not that it's in this one, just, if it is, I don't warn of it.A Gomorra prostitute, the black sheep bastard of a notorious family gets in over his head and seeks out the courier for protection.The first two chapters aren't my best, it was tricky to get this to a point where writing it came more naturally.  The second part will probably be a lot more like my normal work.Part 1 of 2 in the Desert Heat series.





	1. Prologue

I didn’t exactly frequent the Gomorra.  Actually, I avoided it pretty much whenever I could.  I’d have been quite happy to never set foot in the place again, but the courier had other plans, so I ended up on a veritable tour of the Strip.  

“Tour” was the appropriate term; she started out just gambling, but seemed to make it her personal mission to inspect every hallway of the building, as she did everywhere we went.  

“Lucia,” I finally asked as we rounded a corner to a view of more deep crimson carpet and dim lighting, “Not that I’m not eager to wander around this casino for hours, but where exactly are we going?”  I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight in this place, considering the stories I’d heard, wandering the less-crowded rooms of the Gomorra managed to make me even less comfortable than watching her gamble and hoping she’d finally acknowledge my disapproving stare.  Admittedly that was less of a stare and more of a series of occasional scowls; I had the sneaking suspicion that the Omertas were not too fond of having a very obvious Follower hanging around their tables and I’d rather not start a shootout.  

Lucia glanced over her shoulder, shooting me one of her usual winning grins.  She looked so innocent and yet she’d already cleared out the Tops and probably killed more people than I had.  Which was saying something.  She brushed her shoulder-length black hair out of her eyes and laughed.  “I just want to have a look around, stop worrying so much.”  She blended in with the other gamblers in her pre-war yellow dress, her child-like smile was the only sign that she might be as out of place as myself.  She wasn’t; she just looked it.  I’d seen people try to fool her and she saw right through them, but to anyone who didn’t know that she came off as naive.  She knew people tended to underestimate her and that made her cocky, which was part of why I was here, although she’d also done a lot to help the Followers.  I don’t think Lucia would realize if she got in serious trouble until she had another bullet in her skull and I didn’t expect that she’d survive if that happened again.  

Which was why I found myself in a nearly deserted hallway of the Gomorra turning a corner to another nearly deserted hallway and trying to dissuade her.  “I’m not worrying `too much,’ I’m worrying just the right amount.  Do you realize what could happen if you keep doing this—?”  

“Yeah, I know you think I could lose all the caps.  I won’t.”

“Well, yes, there is that, but that’s not what I meant.”  I tried to step in front of her to halt her and she dodged me effortlessly.  “For one thing, the Omertas might not take kindly to you—”

She giggled.  “The Omertas don’t take kindly to anyone.”

“…True enough, but I really don’t think—”  A man, presumably a gambler walked towards us and I fell silent until he was out of sight.  I glanced around to make sure we were really alone and added in a whisper, “If the Omertas find out that you’ve been _cheating_ —”

She snorted.  “Are you asking because you don’t approve or because they took our guns?”

“…Both.” I admitted, “But I’d rather not start a fight in a casino filled with civilians even if we had power armor and plasma casters.”

Lucia frowned.  “That’s not my first choice of armaments, but I like your thinking.”

Crap, I probably shouldn’t have said that.  “Uh, right… I’m not sure that would be a good idea, because I totally know nothing about those.  Or have training to use power armor.  If that’s a thing.  I mean, I figure you need some training, it looks …complicated.”

Lucia raised an eyebrow.  

“Right.  I’m rambling, let’s just get going.”

“To the Zoara Club?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She raised her other eyebrow and when I didn’t volunteer an explanation, she shrugged.  

The Zoara turned out to look much like the rest of the casino, just a bit darker.  Considering the lack of blackjack tables, I suspected that Lucia had really come here to drink.  And maybe watch the dancers.  That seemed like the typical motivation; there was a bit of a crowd and they focused so exclusively on the stage that I’m not sure anyone except the few Omertas lurking around the room even noticed the lab coat that identified my allegiance.  Lucia ordered a beer and I’d followed her to a table before I even glanced at the stage.  

I’d tried not to look partly so I wouldn’t be distracted and partly because the occasional ghouls unsettled me more than I liked to admit.  Really, the dancers frustrated me because I’d heard that most of them were forced to work against their will.  Really, they were practically slaves.  Even if sometimes I couldn’t help but find myself attracted to them, I tried my best not to be.  Somebody had to change this city for the better, and I hoped Lucia might be the one to do that even if she sometimes seemed more interested in gambling and strippers than societal improvement.  

But I saw right away why the crowd seemed so transfixed.  There were five dancers, four of them a typical mix of young men and woman and one ghoul, all of whom looked fairly strung out, but the fifth was clearly the focus of the crowd.  The vast majority of Gomorra dancers and prostitutes looked fairly similar; they needed good looks or they didn’t keep the job.  Usually.  The fifth dancer, despite his distractingly sexy body had a face that looked about average.  With high cheekbones, a blocky jawline, heavy brow, and eyes somewhere between brown and hazel, his face better suited a soldier or bounty hunter.  He might have been intimidating or even threatening if it weren’t for his lopsided grin.  This man would have seemed out of place had he been standing still, but on stage his acrobatic skill made it more than clear why they kept him around.  The dancers all had similar builds, this man just put his muscles to better use.  When I glanced up, I saw him easily ten feet off the ground on the metal pole set into the stage.  He gripped the pole with his thighs and must have climbed it in a similar fashion, although right now he was on his way back down to the stage.  Every move flaunted a musculature that looked straight out of classical sculpture, or else anatomy textbooks.  And it wasn’t just the features; he climbed that pole with a feline grace that far surpassed even the movements of the usual dancers.  This guy looked older than the other dancers and maybe that was simply because he’d been practicing those moves for years.  I doubt I was the only one who stopped caring about the man’s face when he danced like _that_.  

I didn’t realize that I was staring until Lucia elbowed me in the ribs.  “Huh?”

Her brows sank into a frown as she noticed I hadn’t been paying attention.  Then she figured out why and smirked.  “Oh?  Were you enjoying the show?”

I sighed.  “What is it?  What did you want to say?”

She glanced into the crowd and I guess whoever she’d wanted to point out had left, because she shook her head and sipped her beer.  “Never mind.”  Her eyes flicked over the fifth dancer’s balletic display and I followed her gaze before I could stop myself.  “You ever seen somebody dance like that?”

I shook my head.  “Not even in old holotapes.”  I folded my hands and rested my chin on my thumbs, idly rubbing my lip against the knuckle without realizing what I was doing.  The dancer, or whoever came up with the dance, clearly had some skill with directing the gaze, he had a way of moving that drew the eye along his body in the same ways classic artists used to draw the viewer’s focus through their work.  I liked to think it would have been just as captivating if I wasn’t so attracted by him.  

After a few minutes something unsettled me just a little.  Something was slightly off beneath the muscle and the motion.  His skeletal structure was… odd.  When I realized why I barely suppressed a shudder.  His bones weren’t fully developed.  They were close to it, but he might be a teenager, despite the fact that he looked nearly thirty.  A second possibility occurred to me and I mentally berated myself.  Or he was just malnourished.  Which was equally likely.  Hopefully more likely, though that was a dubious relief.  Neither was good, but a lack of nutrition meant that at least the Gomorra didn’t use _underage_ prostitutes.  Or dancers.  No evidence that he was both.  Even though he probably was.  

The dancer paused as the music built to a climax.  He stood with his back against the pole, balancing with all his weight on the toes of one foot.  If he wasn’t dancing erotically, he’d have been a brilliant ballerino.  He confirmed this theory with his next move; he swung his other leg upwards, performing a split but not only that, he managed to lift it in front of him until he hooked the toes around the back of the pole behind him.  That kind of flexibility…

Lucia must have been thinking the same thing.  “Damn.  I can see why they keep him around even with those eyebrows.”

I tried to answer, but couldn’t find my voice, so I just nodded.  I’d be dreaming about those legs for weeks.  

The stage lights dimmed and the dancers left.  About half the crowd settled down at tables around the club, but most returned to the main casino floor to gamble.  Lucia led me in the same direction and soon enough she was gambling again.  I usually tried to think about my research beneath the constant scanning for any Omerta thugs who might have realized she was counting cards, but of course I found my mind wandering back to that dancer.  

And suddenly, there he was.  In the brighter lighting, I noticed a lot more detail about his appearance.  In some ways, the shadows of the club had flattered him; he had dark bags beneath his deep-set eyes and subtle but clearly premature wrinkles also around them.  He’d lived a hard life so far, maybe as a prospector or just a junkie.  A jagged scar split his left eyebrow.  The bright light flattered him in other ways.  His hair, which had looked black in the dim light, was actually brown and the glow of fire and chandeliers reflected off of it like polished metal.  His eyes, likewise, proved to be an unusual sort of hazel.  The edges were deep green, but they appeared crimson closer to the center.  I noticed this because I turned around and found myself staring into them.  

I’d turned because I’d heard someone moving behind me; I’d had no idea that it was him.  He jingled, which was most of the reason I’d noticed him behind me.  He’d changed since the show; his particular brand of barely decent leather fetish wear left his chest bare aside from nipple rings attached to fine chains.  He also wore leather bracers and a thick matching dog collar with the name tag “Max”.  I’m not sure which made more noise.  

“Hello.”  He grinned seductively, cementing my opinion that this guy was both trouble and a prostitute.  “I saw you enjoying the show.”

“Yeah…?”  I glanced back towards the table and realized that Lucia hadn’t noticed him.  I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.  Come to think of it, if he’d approached us, he was probably angling for… well, work, considering what he did.  

The dancer leaned against the gambling table, moving with that same feline grace to place himself in front of me between Lucia and the gambler beside her.  He flicked the tag on his collar.  “Call me Max.”  I found it almost suspicious that the dealer barely glanced at him even though all four gamblers and a handful of passersby were staring quite openly.  

I wasn’t really comfortable dealing with him, but partly because so many eyes were on us, I just focused on his name.  “Did you choose Max because you’re wearing a dog collar, or did you mean it as a double entendre?”

I swear that sleazy grin was permanent; even if he was being honest, he looked like he was lying.  He chuckled.  “Well, it’s my name, or close enough to it, but you can think whatever you want to think.”  

Lucia leaned back to speak to him, flipping up a pair of queens as the hand ended and letting the dealer deal the next hand.  “Max, huh?  I’d like to see how accurate that is.”

Something in the crowd behind me caught his eye and he faltered.  “Uh… perhaps some other time.”  Max and the dealer exchanged a glance that conveyed what might have been a threat for the latter to keep this to himself and the dancer strode off into the crowd, every move tantalizingly graceful.  I watched for who he might be meeting with, but instead he fled into the hallway.  He must have been signaled by someone, but scanning the crowd, I didn’t see any Omertas looking this way.  One of them still must have signaled him, they were just trying to hide it.  I glanced down to see if Lucia had seen, but I found her watching someone else in the crowd instead.  Trying to follow her gaze, I couldn’t pick out anyone of note in the sea of gamblers and off-duty soldiers.  

“What?”

Her brow creased as she looked at me.  “Did you see who he was looking at?”  She might have been tense, but I dismissed her tone as suspicious.  

“No.  Did you?”

Lucia frowned into the crowd, eyes darting around but apparently she’d lost whoever she’d seen again.  “Yeah.”

She returned to Blackjack without volunteering an explanation, and I gestured expectantly.  “And…?”

“Doesn’t matter.  Now,” Lucia insisted, picking up her hand, “What’dya say I win more caps until they throw us out?”

 


	2. In Hot Water

I loved my job.  

I knelt in front of Nero, listening to his pen tap against the desk above me.  I guessed he was keeping track of accounts right now; he alternated between hurried writing and tapping the pen on the table.  He might be doing math, but maybe I was just distracting.  I did, after all, have his dick halfway down my throat.  

I serviced customers as well, of course, and I performed a wide array of other services for the Gomorra, but really I think Nero just liked having me for himself.  Not to say there was anything romantic between us— I don’t think Nero would have been interested in romance even if Cupid stabbed an arrow up his ass— but he was the only one who knew my history and I think it turned him on to have me at his mercy.  As if it made the Omertas some kind of serious threat to the NCR because he had me under his desk.  I’d become scarily good at reading people and I knew Nero liked having power over me.  That was why he had his fingers hooked beneath the leather of my collar, forcing me to take him as far into my throat as I could handle.  

It wasn’t comfortable, actually, I could barely breathe, but he wasn’t Big Sal, who lived up to his name, and I knew from experience that I could take more before I passed out.  I’d never told him, but I did like that he was rough with me.  I was hard myself, or as hard as my nearly skintight shorts would allow.  I loved sex under any circumstances, or at least that’s what I told myself at the time.  Beneath Nero’s desk, I focused on the velvety texture of his skin and the smell of his crotch.  He actually kept himself very clean, much cleaner that most of my clients so I was much more willing to do this.  Not that I let him know I didn’t mind, I don’t think he would have really enjoyed this if he knew I was willing.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nero had a great pokerface and aside from pausing to tap his pen, I’m not sure even I would have realized he was midway through a blow job if I’d seen him from any other angle.  

That was probably why Big Sal just walked in and closed the door before launching into a rant about what they were planning.  Nero’s hand balled into a fist, locking my collar in place with a force that told me I was dead if I so much as moved.  I froze obediently.  Mostly I was hoping my knees wouldn’t give way; they really started to hurt when I’d been kneeling this long, even on carpet.  I tried to breathe silently around his cock.  

Living and working at the Gomorra, I heard more than my fair share of confidential information, and I admit, I wasn’t above selling it to further my own goals, namely keeping myself alive, but the bosses’ plans were information as dangerous as plutonium.  I didn’t want to hear what they discussed, but curiosity got the better of me and the certainty that they’d kill me just for hearing them led me to listen for anything I might use against them.  In two minutes, Big Sal explained more than I’d heard or ever imagined before Nero got a word in edgewise.  

“Give me a moment to finish these accounts, I’ll meet you in my suite and we can talk.”  For a split second, Sal must have hesitated, but everyone followed Nero’s orders around here or they turned up dead.  I heard the door close and once it shut, Nero hauled me off his dick and stood.  I half expected to be shot before I caught my breath, but I lived to look back up at him.  Nero had already made himself presentable and I wouldn’t have expected certain death if I wasn’t so familiar with the way the Omertas worked.  “You’re gonna fucking stay here and we’ll finish this when I get back.”

I nodded, desperately hoping my expression looked more subservient than calculating.  Whether he believed me or not, he left, but I heard the door lock behind him.  He’d designed the office to lock from either side; he just had a skeleton key to get out even if someone tried to lock him in.  He’d taken that key with him.  

I climbed into his chair, grateful to at least get off my knees while I pondered my predicament.  How did I always get myself into these messes?  

He’d be back soon, or possibly whoever he’d sent would arrive soon.  I doubted it would be Troike, we both knew I was friendly with the arms dealer, but Clanden was more likely.  That sick bastard liked killing, and even though I could probably deal with him unarmed, I didn’t expect to be able to escape after that.  No, by the time Nero sent someone, the guards at the door would have been told.  I needed to get out of here now.  

The door might be less of a problem than I’d thought.  Looking at it carefully, I realized I might be able to unscrew the hinges with Nero’s letter opener.  He’d probably stabbed someone with the thing at some point, but that didn’t make the blade any less suitable for this task.  It was a good thing I worked fast with tools like that.  I pulled the door inward so no one would see it fall into the room outside and by some miracle there was no one in eyeshot.  In the Gommora, nobody noticed me walking towards the door.  Every glance my way, I foresaw a shout, or some gun trained on my back, but none came.  They had reason to expect me to stay; I wasn’t being held here against my will like most of the others.  If I left, they’d assume I had permission, or was just dancing outside.  The secretary even waved at me as I stepped through the door and as a final fuck you to the Omertas, I waved back.  I hadn’t really expected to make it this far.  

Outside the smokey, humid heat of the casino, the desert air seemed to draw the water from everything it touched and the sunlight left me momentarily blinded.  Where was I going?  

Home wouldn’t take me and anywhere under NCR control was just as dangerous.  I had a chance in the Legion, if I could get there, but they weren’t exactly taking recruits and I’d probably be killed just trying to reach them.  There weren’t a lot of places the Omertas couldn’t touch.  

The answer came to me with the stench of whiskey on the afternoon breeze.  Cassidy, one of the companions of the famous courier walked past and whistled.  She was already drunk, no doubt returning to the Lucky 38, and her whistle was just a catcall, probably to myself as the other dancers were both women.  She looked away as the sound left her lips, veering up the stairs towards the tower.  That had to be the safest place on the Strip, and right now I had the perfect opportunity.  

Trusting the booze to dull her senses, I jogged over and followed Cassidy inside, less than a meter behind her.  I timed my footfalls to match her own, although, being barefoot, mine hardly made enough sound to notice.  I paced her to the elevator and my heart skipped a beat as the securitron tried to warn her about me.  Cassidy drowned him out.  “I’m not having any sass about where I was and why I was drinkin’ this early, ya’ hear me?”

“Now, I ain’t tryin’ to sass anyone.  It’s just—”

“That’s what I thought!” Cass snapped, failing to notice one robotic arm starting to point towards me.  The elevator arrived and she staggered inside.  In her disorientation, I managed to stay behind her even as she turned back to face the door.  The doors closed before the securitron could speak again and the elevator started to rise.  

I spent the ride debating exactly how I’d reveal my presence.  To the courier herself, of course, or maybe just the greatest number of people I could find.  The more of them I dealt with at once, the greater the chance that at least one person would object to shooting me long enough that I could talk them out of it.  

Far too soon, the elevator doors slid open at the courier’s suite and Cass staggered out of the elevator.  I followed her into the hallway out of fear that the elevator would close and I’d have to deal with robots to get back here.  Instead, I was spotted.  In the space of the next few seconds, I met most of the courier’s crew.  

“Cass!” a burly man warned as he leveled an NCR service rifle at my head.  He’d been sitting on a chair in the hallway, perhaps waiting for the courier and planning to leave with her.  He had soldier written all over him, most likely sniper, maybe special OPS.  Maybe Bitter Springs veteran, judging by that dark and disillusioned look in his eyes.  I didn’t have time to process my dislike.  

Cass spun around, or rather stumbled to face me, catching herself with one hand against the wall.  The fury on her face became a flirtatious smirk as I raised my hands and tried to look nervous.  “Hey,—” Cass began, but was interrupted before she could say something flirtatious.  

The Follower I’d met before when the courier had won a few thousand caps stepped into the room, “What’s—?”  His gaze lit on me and I didn’t fail to see him blush.  “Oh.  Hello, what are you doing here?”

“It’s a long st—”  Opening a door that washed us in the distracting scent of baked desserts, a ghoul joined us in the hallway, followed closely by a super mutant.  

Seeing me, he laughed, “Cass, you’ve got good taste, but I don’t think you’ll get any privacy here.”

The super mutant following him growled, “ _Little_ _Jimmy_?  What have you gotten yourself into?  Grandma will need to make more cookies.”

“That won’t be necessary!”  The door directly in front of me swung open towards the end of my desperate attempt to stop the super mutant from baking anything for me.  I found myself facing the courier, decked out in Van Graff combat armor with a powerful-looking pistol in one hand.  She lowered it when she recognized me.  

“I didn’t realize they started renting you out.”

I had no idea if she was joking or not, but before I could decide how to react, a cyberdog charged at me from another open door.  Cass caught and restrained him long enough for the courier to calm him down with a single command.  In that time, a gleam of moving metal distracted me.  “Oh, you have an eyebot—”  

I didn’t have a chance to finish my sentence before the last of the courier’s gang hit me in the back of the head with a throw pillow.  “What the hell are you doing here?!”

I caught the pillow out of habit and turned to see one of the last people I expected.  “ _Vero_?!”

From four speakers at once, came the yell, “You know each other?!”

“Ga—”

“ _Max.”_

Vero frowned at my insistence and glanced at the name tag on my collar.  “Max?  You’re going by _Max_ now?”

“Yeah,” I did my best to keep my voice perfectly neutral and almost polite, “Max.  I’m going by Max.  I thought my other name wasn’t the best idea especially considering the Gomorra.”

“The Gomorra?”  She shook her head.  “Is that where you ran off to?”

“Oh, come on, where else did you think I’d go?”

“Well…”  She glanced at my outfit, “not the _Gomorra_ …”

“Yes,” the courier snapped, getting straight to the point, “he’s a stripper.  Now how did you get in here?”

For all I knew, the dog and the eyebot, and maybe Veronica, wanted to kill me, but only the courier and that NCR soldier looked openly hostile, which was a relief.  I really had expected that something or someone would kill me before I had a chance to explain.  I raised my hands again in surrender, holding the throw pillow to cover my left palm.  “I followed Cass, I’m here to tell you something and also, honestly, to ask if I could stay here— or really anywhere in the Lucky 38—.”  

“Hell no.”  The soldier growled his response and shifted his rifle into a position where it was even easier to level at me.  

I let my smile falter very slightly.  “Yeah, I figured as much.”  I sighed and focused on the courier as she was really the only one I had to convince, “Look, I’ve got information, and this time it seemed like I’d be much better off telling you rather than… other parties.  It’s important, that’s the reason I came here and didn’t take my chances with anyone else who might want to know.”  I tried to imply that I wouldn’t tell her if she didn’t let me stay, and really I might have kept it to myself as a bargaining chip, but only so I could use it to get the NCR to protect me.  But I didn’t like or trust them; I wasn’t risking that unless she ensured that none of her crew would hear me out.  Even asking one of them for a safe house was better than taking my chances with the NCR.  I had reason to believe they’d already been infiltrated anyway, so I wouldn’t be safe in their custody.  

The ghoul spoke up.  “Because you’re clearly the most trustworthy source.”

I frowned a little and tried to sound honest.  “I’m not denying that I’m a stripper and a prostitute—” Veronica gave me an insulted stare and I ignored her, “—but that’s why I hear things.  In this case, very dangerous things that have a lot of people wanting me dead right now.”  I paused and decided to give them a hint so the courier might believe me, “The Omertas have the means and motive to kill a whole lot of innocent people.”  I considered Vegas, shrugged, and added, “Or at least relatively innocent.”

The courier was watching me silently, chewing her lip as she thought, her innocent smile gone for once.  It seemed like the others must have noticed her expression.  None of them said anything until she spoke.  “Lily?  Raul?  Take him in there and keep an eye on him.”  She pointed.  “Everyone else, to the dining room.”

Faced with a supermutant, a ghoul who seemed to have been around the block more than twice, and a cyberdog who trailed after them as they led me to a chair in the other room, I hardly expected that I’d be able to escape even if I wanted to.  I just hoped the courier would be helpful.  

*       *       *

Lucia wasn’t exactly in a good mood.  Everyone could tell that something bothered her about the stripper who’d so casually snuck into her suite, but I was probably the only one who knew she didn’t object to him on principal.  With how strongly she’d come onto him earlier, I actually suspected that she just didn’t like thinking that just anyone could tail one of us inside to gain access at any time.  

Once we were all inside the dining room, Boone shut the door and Lucia slapped her palms against the table.  “Right.  Thoughts?”

“Shoot him.”

The speaker was Boone, predictably, and I was surprised when Veronica beat me to the retort.  “No!  He came to us for help, we can’t just—”  

“He broke into the Lucky 38,” Lucia insisted, “we’d be within our rights, if we did shoot him, especially in the wasteland.”

I stared at her incredulously, hoping she was only playing devil’s advocate.  “So we’re living by martial law?  Even if we want to punish him, we shouldn’t jump straight to death—”

“I agree,” Cass slurred, “Shame to waste a body like that—”

“You’re just biased—”

Lucia smacked the table, “Okay, punishment aside, is there any reason to believe he’s telling the truth?”

I shrugged, “The Omertas are always planning something.  Even if he’s making this up to save his hide, can we really afford to dismiss the possibility—?”

“Now _yer_ biased.”  

“Okay,” I scowled at Boone, “I admit the guy’s very good-looking, but thinking about this _logically—_ ”

Lucia turned towards Veronica, “Vero, can we trust him?”

Veronica hesitated.  “…I don’t think he’s lying.”

“But he lies a lot?”

She answered evasively.  “He doesn’t lie about _this_ sort of thing.  We can trust him.”  

I tilted my head.  I knew she wasn’t interested in men, so they weren’t ex-lovers, but the way they were acting… “Veronica, how do you know each other?  Is he your brother?”

She cringed before she could stop herself.  “No!  …I mean… sort of.”  

Boone and Cass each quirked an eyebrow.  Lucia and Vero exchanged an opaque stare and I guess that told Lucia all she needed.  The courier went back to her normally bubbly attitude.  “Alright.  Let’s get Lily, Raul, and Max in here and find out what he knows.”

 


	3. Out of the Frying Pan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max shares what he knows and gets used to the Lucky 38.

When they sat me down at that table, I expected an interrogation.  I considered every torture method I could think of and thanked my lucky stars that I’d built up such a high tolerance for pain.  Damn.  With my luck, I was practically a frumentari without the army to fall back on.  

The super mutant changed my mind about torture as she offered me a plate of cookies and set another plate on the table closer to the courier and her friends.  I tried to look polite as I waved her away, “No thanks.”

Seven pairs of eyes focused on me in everything from surprise to suspicion.  

“Nobody doesn’t like cookies.” the soldier grumbled, as if this was some gross violation of his moral code.

The Follower was more reasonable.  “There must be _some_ people who don’t like cookies; it’s not illegal.”

The courier saved me the trouble of coming up with a change of subject.  “At any rate, Max, what exactly are the Omertas planning?”

For the barest moment, I gathered my thoughts and then I launched into it, “Nero’s been working with the Legion on something called Operation Racket, they’ve got a room full of guns, mostly thanks to an arms dealer they’re blackmailing— which I had a role in, accidentally, I didn’t know what they were planning to do.  The arms dealer’s named Troike and he’s a decent guy, just with a bit of a weakness for drugs; their other guy’s called Clanden.  He’s probably a psychopath, and I mean more than most of the people who work there.  Clanden’s some kind of chemist with fewer morals than even myself, he’s got a formula to create large amounts of chlorine gas, I don’t know why exactly, but it’s not good.  Nero and Sal are planning to use all this to kill a lot of civilians and basically cause chaos in some bid to take over the Strip, most likely coordinated to coincide with whenever the Legion attacks the dam.”  

In the silence while everyone processed that revelation, I decided to add, “The secretary might be able to point you in the right direction, but she’s got a debt to the NCR, so Nero might have plans to have her killed.  I’ve also heard that Cachino’s doing something on his own, and Nero would probably be pissed if he found out.  The Gomorra’s got some big players who drop by occasionally, so I would say be careful when you look into this, but I figure you already know that.  Also, I have a suspicion that the NCR might have been infiltrated by Legion spies, or at least one, so I’d be leery to tell them, which is another reason I went to you guys rather than the NCR embassy.”  

“Bullshit,” the soldier grunted, thought I’m not sure if he referred to any part in particular or if he didn’t believe me at all.  

The courier shook her head.  “It makes sense.”  When the soldier frowned at her, she elaborated, “I saw Vulpes Inculta at the Gomorra more than once—”

Amid the ensuing cries of shock and outrage, I only heard the Follower’s.  “You saw him?  When?  Was that—?”  

“Yes,” the courier replied, “That was the day we first met Max.”

Veronica and a few others remarked with surprise that they’d met me before, but the courier spoke over them.  “We need to head this off.  Max, you’re staying here.  Indefinitely.  Arcade, I’m taking you and Rex.”

“I’m not sure I’m the best choice for an assault of this scale…—”  The Follower was the one to protest and his name stuck in my mind.  Of course this absurdly idealistic, intelligent, and possibly pacifist Follower had an appropriately quixotic name.  

The courier corrected him, “This isn’t just an assault, the one guy’s a chemist.  I need someone who knows chemistry well enough to tell me if we find something dangerous.”

I hadn’t anticipated that she’d be that careful, although maybe she just didn’t trust Arcade around me after how distracted I’d made him earlier.  “It’s probably a good idea to bring a chemist,” I assured her, “Aside from Clanden, Troike can make thermite.”

“He can make what?”

“Thermite?  Thermine?  Thermide?  I don’t remember what it’s called, I just know it’s some explosive he can whip up.  Explosives really aren’t my thing, I never found out much about it.”  

“Thermite,” Arcade confirmed, “It’s called thermite and I’ve heard of it.  I don’t know much about it, but I can probably recognize it and the compounds used to make it.  Probably.”

The courier scanned the rest of the group and shrugged.  “Probably will have to be good enough.  Let’s go.  I’m gonna grab my minigun and that weird energy weapon we found for you.”

~        ~         ~

For the next week, I settled into the Lucky 38.  In basic accommodations, it wasn’t that different from the Gomorra, there were just fewer prostitutes and fewer gamblers.  And the lack of Nero, Sal, and Clanden made for a decided improvement over my old residence.  I learned everyone’s names pretty quickly and hacked the elevator so I could request a securitron to get me the things I needed.  That arrangement was temporary; I had a plan for the future, but I couldn’t risk getting caught while I did that.  The courier’s companions came and went whenever they pleased and over the next week, they were very busy.  The courier herself came back often to switch who she had with her.  I heard they killed Nero, Sal, and Clanden, as well as half their goons.  Troike made it out alive, I think, at least nobody mentioned having seen him.  After the Gomorra, Lucia must have drawn even more attention, because suddenly she was working with NCR.  

I tried not to show my annoyance.  She hadn’t seemed to support the Legion, certainly, but I didn’t like the NCR.  I’d chosen the courier over them specifically because she was not their ally, but I guess I’d been wrong.  Lucia was gone for most of the next week, leaving before sunrise and returning after dark, not that I could tell the time of day.  Raul and Lily left around that time, the former going back to his house for a while and the latter heading into the mountains to help some doctor with his research.  Presumably this was as an assistant or test subject rather than a scientist; I didn’t really think she had the brains to run such research, although she was certainly smarter than most mutants.  When Cass wasn’t with the courier, she was usually drinking and Arcade left often as well.  He claimed he was going back to the Follower’s camp and I wasn’t surprised, but I did get the sense that he might be at least a little motivated by the fact that I made him uncomfortable.  

Boone, on the other hand, made _me_ very uncomfortable.  He didn’t trust me, and while I understood that, the soldier made a point of carrying his rifle everywhere he went and often cleaned it in the suite with a look like he planned to shoot me as soon as he finished.  Needless to say, that made it very difficult to sleep.  

I still got more than enough rest.  Once I was out, almost nothing could wake me and a lot of things made me very tired during that first week.  Despite the array of beds, I didn’t know if any of them had been claimed, so I claimed one of the couches.  I was lying there, drinking vodka and debating the merits of going back to sleep when Arcade returned one evening.  

I knew it was him as soon as the elevator opened.  Most of the courier’s companions had some identifying scent, and in my opinion his was by far the most pleasant.  Boone reeked of smoke and B.O., Cass stank of whiskey, Raul smelled faintly of oil, and Lily had the tormenting scent of fresh-baked cookies.  I don’t know exactly what Arcade did all day, but he always smelled like desert plants, some of which had very strong scents.  Some of which I think I was actually allergic to, considering the last two days I’d been sneezing uncontrollably whenever he was around.  I sneezed as he walked into the room today.  

“Are you alright?”  He must have noticed how often I’d been sneezing, or else he was just worried.  He seemed the type.  

“Do you work with flowers or something?  Is there a garden in Freeside that I don’t know about?”  My eyes started watering and I rubbed the bridge of my nose in a vain effort to stop the burning in my sinuses.  Arcade looked like he’d planned to sit down beside me, but he thought better of it.  

“I work with plants—”

“For the Followers?”

“Yes.”

“I would have thought they’d be more focused on saving all the drunk or dying folks.”

“I do research.”  He sighed and headed off my next question.  “We can’t all be good with people.”

“You and I must have very different standards of `good with people.’  At the Gomorra—”

He crouched to look at me and recoiled as I tried to stifle another sneeze.  “The Gomorra is hardly the best example.”

“Touché.”  

“Are you sick or—?”

He reached out to touch my neck and I forced his hand away.  “I’m not sick.”  I sniffled and cleared my throat.  “I suspect I’m allergic to something you’ve been working with, I’m just not sure what, or if there’s anything I can do to treat it.  I don’t exactly have the resources to make an antihistamine right now.”

He’d started to apologize, but at that last statement, he stopped and frowned.  “You know how to synthesize an antihistamine?  Where did you learn _that_?”

I waved dismissively.  “Look, I know a lot of things.  What plants are you working with?”

He got up and I didn’t understand why until he took off his lab coat and washed his hands.  “It’s probably the burroweed,” Arcade explained, “that research was especially pointless, so I’m not going to be working with it again.”  

I sneezed again.  “Of course.  That’s a species of ragweed, isn’t it?”

“You know a lot more than I’d expect from a… from someone in your position.”

I laughed, which became another sneeze and then a sneezing fit.  “I know a lot more than most people expect.”  

He gave me a questioning stare and stepped a bit closer as I drank a long gulp of vodka from the bottle.  I didn’t answer him.  “Why exactly do you study plants?  I know you’re doing research for the Followers, but what sort of research?”

“Stimpaks out of barrel cacti and other fantastic improbabilities.”  I was lying under a blanket, but a thought seemed to occur to him when he noticed my bare shoulders.  “Do you have a change of clothes?  I’m sorry I didn’t think of it earlier, but I can pick something up—”

“I’m fine as is, but you’re right.”  I sat up a bit more properly so he could join me if he wanted, not that my sinuses would appreciate that.  “I _did_ have clothes at the Gomorra, if they’re still there, and you can get me a change of clothes, if you feel like it, but I can also get them by my own means.”

“…your own means?”  I grinned mysteriously and he rolled his eyes.  “You _like_ being enigmatic, don’t you?”

“No more than you do.”

He gave me another, almost stern look and then sighed.  “I’m going to try and clean the burroweed off and maybe it won’t bother you so much, but I’m not sure why I bother.”

“Thanks.”  I lay back down to sleep.  

 


	4. And Into the Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets a lot more sexual. And apologies for the mood-whiplash, that will probably happen fairly often in this work. I originally planned to post this a few days after the previous chapter, but stuff happened and I had trouble with my internet, so I'm posting them back to back.

Arcade did end up getting me clothes, possibly because he just found my skimpy stripper’s outfit too revealing.  I tried to wear it whenever possible just to mess with him.  He was cute when he was uncomfortable, but really I was bored.  Realizing I wasn’t going away, Boone started avoiding the Lucky 38.  Lily and Raul didn’t come back for a week after that and the courier kept up her schedule of never being around when I was awake, even if I was now awake at different times.  I don’t think she did it intentionally; she seemed very busy.  She was a major player and with everything happening around the Mojave, she didn’t have much time to spare.  Cass stopped by sometimes.  Whenever I saw her she was either drunk or passed out.  She hit on me whenever she could and groped me about as much as I was used to, but I’d learned long ago how to deal with drunks like her.  I got her talking, played cards with her, all the usual stuff to entertain us both.  Veronica also dropped by, but that was different.  I think she actually liked the Lucky 38, as did I, but I bothered her.  I preferred Cass and Arcade.  

As things settled down I found enough free time at night to remedy my inability to supply myself.  I could make most of what I needed given the raw materials and I did so whenever possible.  I did that mostly at night, when everyone else was asleep and I could use the hot plate without people asking what I was doing.  During the day, I slept, or confined myself to more ordinary tasks.  Mostly I entertained Cass and struggled to keep her hands off me.  

“Bullshit, you’re cheating.” Cass insisted after the fifth hand of poker.

I laughed and raised my hands in surrender, “No, I swear I’m not.”

“Liar.”  She swiped for my bottle of vodka, having finished her own whiskey and I snatched it out of the way.  

“I mean it, I’m just very good at reading people.”

She grabbed for my booze again and I stood to dodge, holding the vodka as far from her as possible.  

“Then why’ve you got that stupid grin like yer yankin’ my chain?”

“This is my face!  _And_ my vodka!  This is just the way I look, Cass!”

She lunged at me and I bolted through the hallway to the living room, barely noticing as the elevator opened and I raced past Arcade.  Cass didn’t stop until I vaulted a desk to put some barrier between us.  “Come on,” she growled, “You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you anything!”  I was having fun with this and my grin only faltered a little when Arcade followed us into the room.  Hopefully he’d listen to my side of things and not just side with Cass, I got the sense that he was reasonable, but he surprised me sometimes.  I couldn’t really read him as effortlessly as I could analyze most other people.  

Cass slurred a curse and grabbed over the desk, missing me badly.  “How about that vodka for all the caps you won?”

“Cass, we’re both nearly broke.  I won nine caps.  Nine.  That’s not even worth a bottle of vodka!”

“It’s worth half!”  She scrambled drunkenly over the desk and I hopped on top of it to flee.  I balanced on the balls of my feet to bound gracefully over to the bed furthest from the door, not touching the floor once.  Cass and Arcade both stared in stunned admiration and I gave an exaggerated bow, smirking until Cass charged towards me, knocking over a chair in her haste.  

As inebriated as she was, even slightly drunk, I remained far more nimble.  Still, dodging her around that bed, she managed to grip the neck of the bottle above my hands and I didn’t dare hold it farther from her lest this devolve into a very one-sided make-out session.  Or sex.  I liked sex, I just wasn’t drunk enough to want sex _with Cass_.  “Cass, you’ve had enough, really, leave me my vodka.”

She slurred something unintelligible and tugged on the bottle, throwing me off balance.  Entirely on the instinct of someone practiced as a dancer, I brought my legs up and forward, intending to leap over Cass but restrained by her grip on the bottle.  The result was that for an instant, I found myself straddling Cass with her chin in my crotch and my thighs on either side of her neck.  I was sitting, rather uncomfortably, on her chest.  Apparently my body trumped the possibility of booze or else her drunk mind thought she could get both if she distracted me, so Cass released the bottle to grab my pants with both hands and I absconded immediately as much to keep her out of my pants as to protect my vodka.  

I had hoped to reach the hallway, but her grab had succeeded in unzipping my shorts, not that she’d reached inside, so, although I retained my vodka, I’d been effectively hobbled by my pants.  I stopped, holding my vodka over my head and hopefully out of reach while I balanced on one leg and struggled to pull my pants back up.  Cass enjoyed the view.  “Do you even have normal underwear?”

“I’m used to this.” I replied, not really answering her question as I tried to get my red sequined thong back into my shorts.  I was glad that she seemed to have given up on my vodka, but I’d been wrong.  With remarkable agility or maybe just determination, Cass scrambled to her feet and dove for my vodka again.  

“You’ve already had two bottles of whiskey!” I retorted, hopping backwards onto a chair to hold my vodka out of reach over my head.  

Cass grabbed my shoulder, trying to steady herself as she grabbed for the bottle, “And you’ve already had one bottle of vodka, this one’s mine!”

“You didn’t buy it—!”

Somebody grabbed the bottle out of my hand and I stumbled off the chair and turned around to see.  I’d completely forgotten about Arcade, who now held the bottle out of either of our reach and eyed us in frustration.  “I think both of you have had quite enough.”  

Cass stalked over to him.  “You’ve got ten seconds to—”  He narrowed his eyes and I guess she had enough sense to realize he was much too stubborn to be intimidated.  Cass snarled something about “no fun at all” and stormed off into the kitchen.  

“You’d better not be opening another bottle of whiskey in there!”

I couldn’t hear her reply and I think it was mostly swearing, but I didn’t give him a chance to advise her again.  I tried to take the vodka while he was distracted, but my hand slipped off the glass and he raised the bottle until it brushed the ceiling.  

I scowled.  “Now that’s just unfair.” 

“You’re as bad as Cass, if you keep doing this—”

I narrowed my eyes and smirked.  “I could climb you to get it, just like I climbed that pole.”

He blushed.  I noticed him glance down, no doubt noting my minimal clothing as much as the scarlet thong still glittering above my unzipped shorts.  “…I don’t doubt that.  Please don’t.”  

I stepped closer, mostly to unnerve him.  I made sure we weren’t quite touching until I leaned forward to speak, brushing my chin against his collarbone because I wasn’t quite tall enough to whisper in his ear.  “I’d really like my vodka back, Arcade.”

He shivered and blushed.  “…Fine.”  He handed me the bottle and I took it politely.  “Don’t show Cass.  Try to drink less, okay?  I’d really appreciate if this didn’t become a regular occurrence.”

“It could be.”

He scowled and I winked at him, taking my vodka to my couch as he walked over to remake the beds I’d jumped across.  

I hadn’t checked the time, but it was later than I’d expected.  Arcade went to sleep shortly after that escapade.  Most of the courier’s friends just slept in whatever they happened to be wearing, but Arcade actually had a set of pajamas.  Granted, they weren’t the sort of sexy sleepwear I’d seen at the Gomorra, they weren’t even particularly good quality, they were just pajamas, but it seemed so old-world that he even bothered to keep a set of clothes just for sleeping.  It was cute.  I didn’t expect that we’d ever date, or even sleep together at that point, I just found him adorable in his striped pajamas, and his concern for others, and the way he got so flustered when I flaunted my body.  

I’d also noticed that he often had trouble sleeping.  That worried me because if anyone was going to disapprove of what I did at night, it was him, and he was also the most likely to catch me.  I drank my vodka and paged through the same old issue of Today’s Physician until I trusted that he was asleep.  I didn’t hear movement from the kitchen and I found Cass passed out when I headed for the workbench.  I made sure she was alive before I set down my vodka and hauled my supplies out of the footlocker where I’d hidden them.  I had a wide array of chemicals and materials, but the courier kept quite enough clutter around the workbench so I didn’t expect anyone to recognize that some of it was mine especially when I stowed it in a container beneath the pile.  

I finished my vodka while I worked, but I’d done this a thousand times by now and trusted myself not to screw it up.  I threw together a little Fixer as well, for Cass.  Maybe I could slip that to her and talk her out of drinking quite so much tomorrow.  I didn’t need her killing her liver on my watch; I might be blamed.  I must have been drunker than I thought because I didn’t hear the elevator doors open.  I didn’t notice there was anyone else awake in the suite until the courier spoke from the doorway.  

“Whatcha making?”

I glanced up so fast that I raked my hand over the hotplate as I took a beaker off of it.  “I can make a lot of things…”  Her innocent face flexed into a frown.  It was slight, but I shuddered.  The girl got things done, she got people to trust her, a lot of people; she wasn’t someone to be trifled with.  “Fixer,” I admitted.

Lucia stepped closer, moving to stand beside me.  Either she was flirting or trying to appear sympathetic.  “What’re you addicted to?”

I shook my head and pointed behind me over my shoulder at the unconscious red-head at the table.  “I thought she could use it.”

“Don’t bother.”

I tilted my head at the courier.  “Why?”

“Cass will never stop drinking.  I’ve tried.”  

For a moment I considered that response.  The courier had an impregnable pokerface; I had no idea if she was lying or if that was true.  But I wouldn’t be alive if she hadn’t let me stay, so her word was law.  I shrugged.  

“Can you make anything else?”

I shrugged again.  “I _am_ a chemist.  I can synthesize Buffout, Med-X, Psycho, Fixer, pretty much anything people at the Gomorra might ask for.  I can also make a bunch of more specific medications; things like anti-histamines and anticoagulants… all kinds of things.”

“Stimpaks?”

I shook my head.  “Not stimpaks.  Basically anything else.”

“Think you can synthesize Lily’s medicine?”

“What is it?”

She shrugged, “I have to ask, but if you can, I’d appreciate it.”  She flashed that angelic grin, “It would save time with her having to hike into the mountains for it right now.”

“Right.”  I tried to sound relaxed.  She was trying to manipulate me and I had no idea why.  It was best to keep my head down and make her like me.  She was dangerous.  Nero had been ruthless, but he couldn’t cover the Mojave.  If I pissed off the courier, I could cross the country and I knew somehow I’d still wake up in a pool of blood to her holding a knife to my throat.  Out of the frying pan, into the fire.  

I answered every question she asked, just hoping Arcade wouldn’t wake up and hear us.  I think she realized I wouldn’t be any trouble.  She wanted Med-X, among other things, and I guess it was good that that was my specialty.  I cooked up eight syringes worth with her hovering beside me.  As I finished the eighth, she slipped her hand down the back of my shorts.  I didn’t react.  I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to.  I set the last syringe down while her fingers crept towards my thigh and she asked, “You’re some kind of doctor?”

I scoffed.  “I cook drugs; that doesn’t make me a doctor.”

“But you were training as one.”  She slid her chin along my shoulder, but that wasn’t why I froze.  She had a tone to her voice like Clanden, or someone even worse.  She thought I’d actively lied to her.  She wouldn’t hesitate to kill me right here if she thought that was true.  

“Yes, I was training as one, but I never completed that training.”

“Veronica told me.”

Behind us, Cass groaned.  “Told ya what?”  She hadn’t opened her eyes or even sat up.  For all we knew, she was still asleep.  

“Nothing,” Lucia insisted, “go back to bed.”

Cass grumbled her assent and the courier shoved me towards the door, pausing only to stash the Med-X in her bag.  I didn’t dare ask why she wanted it.  

With her hand still down my pants, Lucia guided me into her room and only released me once we were inside.  She used that hand to close and lock the door.  “You made drugs for the Gomorra?”

“Yes.”

She tilted her head.  “So you’ve treated… unsavory conditions?”

I raised an eyebrow and hoped I could actually be tactful when my life depended on it.  “You mean _sexual_ disease?”  I really hoped she wasn’t asking what I think she was asking.  “I don’t handle that, but the Gomorra sends—”

“I’m clean,” the courier assured me, realizing why I got so uncomfortable.  She clarified by asking, “Are you?”

“I am.”  I really hoped she wasn’t asking for the reason that most people asked.  Although maybe if I slept with her it would give her more reason not to kill me.  

Lucia frowned, just a little suspicious.  “How?  You’re a prostitute and you said you can’t treat that stuff.”

“I can recognize it.”  It was true enough.  I could recognize the active disease and I could read people well enough to tell when they were intentionally visiting me between outbreaks.  “I don’t deal with clients like that.”

The courier shook her head.  “I’ve been to the Gomorra; you can’t just turn people away, they don’t let you.”

I held up two fingers.  “One, I was pretty much Nero’s pet.  Most of the staff let me get away with anything and I didn’t push the boundaries unless I had to; what Nero didn’t know never hurt him.  And two, I can synthesize a hell of a lot.  When I needed to, I’d slip customers a powerful hallucinogen and they wouldn’t know _what_ we did.  That’s the same stuff the Omertas gave Troike, mixed with Buffout and Psycho, but I didn’t know what they’d be using it for.”  

“Clever.”  She gripped my shoulders and shoved me towards the bed.  I didn’t have much choice.  I was stronger than her and slightly taller, but even if she didn’t have at least one weapon on her, she had allies and I didn’t.  Even if I could kill her and escape, I had other enemies.  The Lucky 38 was probably the only place even close to safe for me.  And if I had to sleep with her to stay here it was better than dying out there.  

Lucia unzipped my shorts and yanked them off of me.  She grabbed the waist of my thong and traced the line it had left imprinted in my skin as she met my gaze.  “You _could_ help out, you know.”

I grimaced, lying sprawled on my back.  “I get the sense that you don’t want me to.”

Lucia giggled.  “Oh, you’re good.”  That love of power unnerved me more than a little.  

She stripped me from the waist down and stepped back to do the same to herself.  I’d been shirtless as usual; now I just had the chains and nipple rings left along with my bracers and collar.  I stroked myself hard while she undressed.  She kept her shirt and jacket on.  Actually, I fully expected her to keep both on the entire time, but she unbuttoned her shirt as she climbed on top of me.  She seemed to think I’d appreciate that so I did my best to keep her thinking that was the case and that I wasn’t trying to picture someone with narrow hips, no boobs, and a dick.  Hopefully I could do this quickly enough to satisfy her without agonizing myself too much.  I’d dealt with women at the Gomorra, but that had been different; I’d gone there voluntarily, in this case I was fleeing to the last place I might be safe.  This was the price I had to pay, not the job I’d signed on for to earn my caps.  

I licked my thumbs and slid them over her clit.  She shivered.  “Your skin’s like ice.”

“Sorry,” I pulled my hands back to warm them up and she caught them.  

“No.  Nothing’s that cold in the Mojave.  I like it.”

I shrugged noncommittally and replaced them.  Poor circulation was clearly very sexy.  Vampire fetishists were in luck with my pale, freezing ass.  At least she wasn’t complaining because that wasn’t something I could readily fix.  

The clit had never been my area of expertise, but trying to think of it as a very very tiny penis seemed to help.  I rubbed until my thumbs went numb and she came.  Panting, Lucia slumped against my chest.  I hoped we might be done for the night until she bit my shoulder.  Hard.  Slender fingers clawed my biceps and she settled her hips very purposefully onto my crotch.  

I wasn’t hard because I hadn’t thought that I’d need to be and when she realized that, the fury in her eyes had me expecting a punch.  “What the hell?!”

I raised my hands as much in surrender as to deflect an attack, but I shouldn’t have bothered.  She caught my wrists and used her leverage to pin me.  Her pale brown eyes probed for any weakness.  They paused on my bracers and collar.  Like a striking scorpion, she dove to untie the laces of the bracer on my right arm and I grabbed her wrist.  She way she glared, I barely managed not to whimper.  “Please, don’t…”  

Twisting her hand out of my grip, Lucia untied the bracer and shucked it off, throwing it across the room probably just because I hadn’t wanted her to remove it.  I let my smile fade, more focused on just keeping myself calm now.  She knew I wasn’t happy, that wasn’t worth hiding anymore.  At least not until I got out of here.  

Lucia sat back for a few seconds, one hand still holding the wrist of my limp arm.  I didn’t dare struggle, so I just let gravity resist her as much as it would, and hoped I wouldn’t slap myself in the face if she let go.  She held my forearm like a prize while her other hand moved to trace the lattice of scars.  From anyone else, I’d expect pity or concern, but I knew that wasn’t the case.  She was just enjoying how vulnerable I was; she knew she could use this against me.  

Lucia didn’t bother to check my other arm.  Once she was satisfied in her study of my scars, she grabbed the metal ring on my collar and hauled me into a sitting position.  “We’re going to have sex.”

When I didn’t immediately move, she raked her nails along my abdomen.  “Even if you don’t fear death, I know you fear pain.”

I maintained a grimace.  She was wrong.  I didn’t fear either.  But I didn’t want to be helpless, as I would be if I left.  And I would rather avoid more suffering while I was here.  I’d obey.  

I think she could tell that she had broken me, or at least convinced me.  She kept her grip on my collar, keeping it painfully tight around my throat, but she shifted her weight onto her knees and propped herself up, balancing with her hips far enough from my crotch that I could get myself hard again.  She barely gave me enough time before she forced me inside of her and slammed my back down onto the bed.  My skull smacked against the headboard and I groaned but fell silent as her free hand clamped over my mouth.  “ _Quiet_.”

I wasn’t going to argue with a heavily armed sadist, at least not considering that she kept most of her weapons in this same room and could no doubt use them more effectively than I could.  

Lucia pounded her hips against me hard enough that I saw bruises there later.  She shifted around my cock with the force of the muscles pushing her onto me.  Given that and the fact that I’d never been too clear on the sensation, I think she came more than twice.  She didn’t take her hand off my mouth and by the end I was gasping into it— as much because I couldn’t breath as due to pleasure.  It was the stimulation and the pain that got me off.  

When I came, Lucia hauled herself off of me, letting my seed spill across my stomach.  She hauled me upright by my collar and released my mouth.  I thought she did that because we were done or, more helpfully, so I could catch my breath.  At this point I was dizzy and my vision swam with lights and patterns.  I could feel my heart pounding painfully, but I chalked that up to my lack of air.  I glimpsed Lucia reaching into the pocket of her jacket but couldn’t process what she was doing.  I saw a flash of steel before something slipped beneath my collar.  Cold metal rested against my throat, pressing on my neck as I tried to breathe.  The blade nicked the skin and a trickle of blood snaked down to my collarbone.  

Lucia watched me unblinkingly.  “ _Never_ refuse me again.”  She pressed the knife into my skin to emphasize her point before she retrieved it, slipping it back into the pocket of her jacket and leaving a deep cut in my neck, hidden beneath the leather of my collar.  “And if you tell _anyone_ about this…”  She tapped that pocket pointedly.  

“Understood.”  This arrangement wasn’t that different from what I’d had going with Nero, except the courier proved to be much more sadistic.  And I fully expected that she’d torture and kill me if I told anyone about this, whether or not they believed me enough to see through her innocent facade.  

 


	5. Guns and Vodka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max will do anything to keep Arcade from prying into his vices. But he doesn't always know when to stop.

Lucia dressed in under a minute and picked out her guns for the day while I tried to compose myself and get my heartbeat back down to a normal rhythm.  She paused, holding one of her largest rifles and gestured towards the door.  “Come on.”

I was barely dressed when she shoved me ahead of her into the hallway while I was still struggling to lace my left bracer.  I found myself incredibly grateful that I’d even had time to cover my arm with it and lace the other one; stepping into the hallway, I found myself face to face with Arcade.  He’d been frowning in either annoyance or suspicion but seeing us leaving the courier’s bedroom, his expression shifted to awkward surprise.  At the time, I assumed that he realized we’d had sex.  I slunk sheepishly past him to go lie down on the couch where I slept.  

I didn’t hear all of the conversation he had with the courier, but I caught the gist as I laced up my bracer and made certain that my minimal clothing covered any possible sign of what we’d just done and what I’d done in the past.  I stretched out and spread the blanket over me while I listened.  

Arcade spoke in a hushed voice, presumably so I wouldn’t hear, but he underestimated my auditory acuity.  It probably helped that I’d never fired a gauss rifle in an underground bunker.  “Did you know he’d been making drugs?”

“Yeah,” Lucia replied calmly and much more loudly.  “It’s fine, I’ve got him making Lily’s medicine and some things we might need if we run into another cazadore nest.”

The doctor hesitated.  “You trust him with that?”

I heard Lucia laugh.  “And here I thought you might be biased based on his looks.  He’s cool.  You think he’s trying to poison us or something?”  She had the slightest edge to her voice and I knew she considered that possibility but didn’t think I’d be that defiant.  

“No,” Arcade admitted, “and from what I saw of his set-up, it does look like he knows what he’s doing, but has it occurred to you why?  I know science isn’t your strong suit, but if the guy knows how to make these things…”

“What’s your point?”

Arcade sighed and spoke so quietly that I could only guess what he said from her reply.  

Lucia giggled.  “Relax, he’s not a junkie.”  Did she believe that or did she just want to dismiss it the way she dismissed Cass’s alcoholism?  

He said something in reply and I couldn’t hear them anymore as they walked into the kitchen to get breakfast or deal with Cass.  I dozed off and didn’t wake until sometime that evening.  

*       *      *

Max was asleep when the courier and I got back.  I found him curled up on the couch, as usual.  The ragged pre-war wool blanket covered enough of him that I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but it also hid any possible sign that he might have been injecting himself.  I tapped his shoulder.  He mumbled something in his sleep but didn’t wake, he just rolled over.  I shook his arm.  “Max?”

Max mumbled something groggily and I froze with one hand still on his bicep.  Had he just said “paladin”?  He was still mostly asleep, and he hadn’t said it very clearly, but still.  A connection to the Brotherhood would explain his knowledge of chemistry and botany.  Although we’d found him at the Gomorra and he’d fled to us, not the Brotherhood, when Nero was after him.  Besides, there were other contexts for the word paladin.  I dismissed it as coincidence as he opened his eyes.  

Max yawned and rolled onto his side, “Huh?”  He looked about thirty right now.  The shadows and wrinkles around his eyes appeared even deeper and everything about him just seemed to sag, as if the vibrant energy he had when he was performing had completely dissipated.  He hadn’t shaved since yesterday and dark stubble added even more age to his face.  The day’s growth of beard also revealed a second scar, similar in width and shape to the one across his eyebrow except that this one ran along his jaw and neck, from the back of his particularly defined sternomastoid muscle almost to his cheekbone.  Either he used some sort of make-up in the mornings or he was hungover or sick.  He was probably hungover, considering last night.  

“Are you sick?”

Instantly, he was guarded.  He went from the kind of hopeless frown I saw in Freeside refugees to a cautious, questioning stare.  And then he tried to hide that.  “Do you just ask everyone?  Is that your method of doctoring?”

I chuckled and sat down beside him as he pulled his legs out of the way, curling up even more tightly.  That worried me although I tried not to show it.  I didn’t know him well enough to be certain and he was a good liar, but people usually curled up that tightly only when they were cold, scared, or in pain.  Granted, it was always a bit chilly here, but I doubted he’d be afraid of me.  Although, come to think of it, I had yet to see him eat… 

“Are you hungry?  And no, I don’t just ask everyone, you just seem…—”

“I’m not hungry,” Max asserted, although his stomach seemed to contradict him by grumbling as he replied.  “And I’m fine, no viruses, no pathogens, no diseases as far as I know.”

I’d been about to reply sarcastically, doubting he’d eaten anything all day, but his answer distracted me.  “Are you saying you’ve checked?”

Max nodded.  “I checked again yesterday, I check regularly.  You know there’s a microscope and a little medical equipment a few floors up, it seems like it used to be House’s personal physician’s office.  Or laboratory.”  

He was deflecting, but that surprised me enough that I had to ask, “As far as I know, the courier never found that or she would have probably sold it all.  How did _you_ find it?”

He folded his hands, right over left, not interlocking his fingers, and frowned.  For a moment, he stared at the wall.  Max sighed, “I can get places.  I’m good with machines.  Look, there’s really just the microscope, none of the rest is very useful or anything you can’t already get access to from the Followers.  My supplies are more limited.”

“I _could_ bring you stuff, you know.  If you need anything you can’t get here.  Like food?”

“I’m not starving,” he insisted bitterly, “Stop asking.”  The facade of the ever-friendly ever-flirty drunk had vanished completely.  I guess I’d sort of suspected, or maybe I’d noticed the cracks in his smile without fully realizing what that meant.  I’d mistaken him for someone like Santiago, who did anything for money and lied so constantly that he was always in trouble.  But that wasn’t the real Max.  He played the showman because that was how he survived and he’d either made mistakes or gotten forced into the life he had, but beneath that mask, he was a broken man, maybe even more broken than the junkies I dealt with back at the Fort.  

“How old are you?”

Those tawny eyes flicked over to me and his grin returned, not quite reaching his eyes.  “I probably look about thirty, don’t I?”

I nodded hesitantly, not wanting to agree if he was really much younger.  

“It’s my face,” Max insisted, gesturing to his brow and boxy jawline.  “And probably how dark my beard comes in.  I’m eighteen.”

My mouth went dry.  “…eighteen?”  I studied his face and frowned.  “There’s no way you’re eighteen.”

He laughed and I couldn’t tell if that meant he’d been joking or if he was just amused that I didn’t believe him.  I rolled my eyes, deciding it must be the former.  He had to be at least twenty-five.  

“I’m serious, your bones aren’t as developed as they should be, it could be a sign of any number of diseases.  I know you have _some_ medical knowledge, do you know if you might be malnourished?”  His build didn’t refute that; he was muscular with virtually no visible body fat, and his bulk could be easily explained by Buffout or other chems.  He certainly had the knowledge to make them himself and that would mask signs of starvation.  Thinking of his reaction to any mention of food and the fact that I had yet to see him eat, I wondered if he might be anorexic.  It would make sense, considering the emphasis his job had placed on appearance.  “Have you eaten _anything_ today?”

His good humor vanished and he scowled at me.  “Stop worrying about me, please.”  Max stood and stretched luxuriously.  He’d been sleeping in his clothes from the Gomorra, making that stretch a very distracting display of his body.  I’m pretty sure he did that on purpose.  I lapsed into silence, willing myself not to think about him sexually as he turned and staggered into the hallway.  I stood and followed him once I managed to focus again.  

*        *       *

My ploy didn’t work for long enough, Arcade stepped into the hall as I was passing the elevator, though I admit I wasn’t exactly running.  “Max, I can’t just ignore the fact that you’re sick, if that’s what this is—”

“It won’t do any good.”

The floor swayed a little more than it had since I’d first stood and I stopped to lean against the wall with Arcade a few feet behind me, also halted.  His concern was justified for a lot of reasons, I guess, but it still annoyed me.  There was nothing I could do to change this right now, nothing he could do either.  Right now it didn’t help that I was hungover and had ended up two days late on taking what I needed to keep myself alive.  Either could have caused the vertigo I was now struggling with.  I stared at the subtle texture of the wall, trying to shake the feeling that I was standing in a very badly piloted vertibird.  Arcade spoke up before I felt stable enough to keep walking.  

“Why?”  I’m pretty sure he thought I was dying and I didn’t feel like correcting him.  For all I knew, I _was_ dying, it was just happening more slowly than I would have liked.  

“It just doesn’t.  It isn’t going to change.”  I didn’t look back, but I heard him follow me as I stumbled into the empty kitchen and grabbed a bottle of vodka from my stash beneath the sink.  I had about thirteen under there and didn’t expect anyone else to find them.  I didn’t mind letting Arcade see when I stashed them because I trusted that with his morality, he wouldn’t steal them and if he tried to wean me off vodka, I knew I could persuade him to give them back.  Besides, I’d distilled it myself and could make more if necessary.  Seeing the bottle in my hands as I closed the hidden panel and turned around, Arcade groaned.  

“Really?  You just woke up and—?”  He sighed in what I mistook for resignation.  “Max, getting drunk isn’t going to help.”

I snorted derisively.  Arcade hadn’t moved since I’d entered the kitchen, so now his tall and pale figure blocked the doorway.  I walked up to him and opened the bottle.  “Getting drunk _always_ helps.  Usually.”  I downed a long gulp and when I paused for breath, he snatched the bottle out of my hands.  

“Whatever you’re dealing with, drinking isn’t going to solve—”  I wasn’t dealing with this first thing in the evening.  

Arcade held the bottle out of my reach, again, but I could still reach _him_.  I stepped forward, balancing on the balls of my feet and stretching upward to kiss him.  I lost my balance slightly, catching myself by grabbing his shoulder and accidentally pushing him back against the doorframe.  Falling and the fact that I caught him with his mouth open made the kiss deeper than I’d intended.  I slid my tongue into his mouth, stroking it across his own tongue as I edged into the doorway and grabbed the base of my bottle of vodka.  There wasn’t much space to move past him and I took advantage of that, intentionally pressing my body against his until I could reach the hallway.  I let my tongue trail over his lips as I pulled back.  I nipped his lower lip as I ended the kiss and grinned at his bewilderment.  His grip slackened so I grabbed my vodka and loped back to the couch before Arcade could come to his senses.  That had been even easier than I’d expected.  

I stretched out on the couch with the blanket over my legs.  I planned to go back to sleep after I had a drink; I could hide the bottle under the couch if I didn’t quite finish it.  With no sign of the courier or anyone but Arcade, I figured I’d be left mostly to my own devices until late tonight when Lucia returned, so I’d be free to sleep until then.  I would have liked to really be alone right now, but that wasn’t going to happen, so I just sipped my vodka and stared at the pattern of the rug.  I tried to think of some problem I hadn’t figured out yet, but I couldn’t come up with anything.  It just felt like pointless busy-work and I couldn’t be bothered.  Really, there wasn’t much I felt like doing lately except for sleeping, drinking, and sex.  

Arcade didn’t follow me for a while.  I estimated ten minutes, but didn’t have a clock so it may have been much longer.  I heard him pacing, no doubt having some argument with himself.  Maybe he was frustrated that I’d played him so easily.  Maybe he was devising some new plan to get me sober.  Maybe he was just trying to figure out why I’d said he couldn’t help me.  I didn’t really consider any other possibilities.  He was a Follower, thus absurdly moral and optimistic if not idealistic.  He cared about me because that was what they did; Followers tried to help and sober up everyone they met, even people they didn’t necessarily like.  I don’t think Arcade hated me, but I certainly annoyed him, I went out of my way to screw with him, mostly because there wasn’t much else to do in this new gilded cage.  I doubt he made any positive distinction between myself and the similar folks back in Freeside.  

Eventually, footsteps and the scent of sagebrush made their way over to the doorway in front of me and I looked up from the carpet to find Arcade standing there looking especially thoughtful.  

*       *       *

Max’s dangerous grin had returned.  I took that as confirmation of my theory, but I asked him anyway.  “Did you do that just to get your vodka back?”

The ex-prostitute laughed, “What do you think?”

I know I was one to talk, but did he ever really answer anything?  I guess I wasn’t surprised.  I sighed and leaned against the doorframe, folding my arms across my chest.  Two could play at that game.  “I think I might have to take your vodka more often.”  If he was just doing this because it made me uncomfortable, I’d pretend that I found it just as amusing.  Although he was a prostitute.  It was probably a mistake to basically play chicken with him like this.  Of course, I realized that after I’d said it.  

“And I might have to do more than kiss you next time,” Max retorted reflexively, that predatory smirk sending all the worst signals.  This was a mistake.  This was a _huge_ mistake.  

I laughed nervously and stepped back, forgetting I had a wall behind me and bumping into it.  “Uh, no.  How about no.”  What was I thinking, bluffing him about sex?  That was just a recipe for disaster.  But he was frustrating, in more ways than one.  In most ways, actually.  I realized that he was bored and that he liked messing with me probably because he didn’t have anything else to do around here.  I also saw how he looked and he must have realized I was attracted to him, considering he still wore his old clothes instead of the much more modest ones I’d gotten for him.  And he was trouble.  I couldn’t trust a single word he said, especially when he smiled like a cat eying a fish tank; Max radiated deceit.  It didn’t help that he was probably an alcoholic, anorexic junkie or at least a dealer.  

That reminded me.  “Max, are you addicted to something?”

Those jasper eyes flashed teasingly, “Cock?”  He gestured with the bottle of vodka, “Or are you insinuating that I’m an alcoholic?  Because you’re certainly not subtle about that; you shouldn’t have bothered to ask.”

“So you’re an alcoholic?”  I hazarded the guess, sighing internally at his constant flirtation.  

“I’d say no,” he laughed, “but it’s a fine line.”

“So probably.”  He didn’t answer and I continued, “I’m not jumping for joy either way, but don’t try to deflect a master deflector.  You know how to make drugs, it stands to reason that, with Vegas being the way it is, you’re using your product.  Are you?”

“I make a lot of things, it’s not all bad.  Even addictive chems have proper uses.”

“But are you using them properly?”

Max shrugged and that sunken look crept back into his eyes as he frowned into his vodka.  “…yes.”  

He was hardly convincing.  I sat down beside him, taking over the opposite end of the couch with his legs stretched out between us under the blanket.  “Max, if you know how to make chems, can you make Fixer?  At the very least, we could trade what you _can_ make— ideally to the Followers— _for_ Fixer.  You don’t need to—”  

“I’m not high.”  I guess he realized that I didn’t believe him because his grin returned but didn’t reach his eyes.  He shook his head.  “I’m really beginning to think you’ve got a messiah complex and I got to admit, it’s kind of cute, but also very frustrating.  I’m not shooting up Med-X.  Or _anything_.  I drink.  I sleep around.  Right now, that’s the extent of my vices.  I’m not even having that much sex.”

As usual, he had me torn between anger, pity, and awkwardness.  Messiah complex?  I wanted to punch him!  Nothing could be further from the truth, hell, I couldn’t even find out what he was on!  Really, I was probably the most useless Follower at the fort, my research wasn’t going anywhere and it wasn’t going to help anyone.  Working with the courier, I did what I could and that still wasn’t much.  How could he, how could anyone go through life without even _trying_ to help make the world a better place?  It just proved how hopeless he must be.  He might be depressed, or else he was just convinced that the world could never improve so he’d given up trying.  That was most of what made me so desperate to help him, and I admit his looks were another part of that.  I couldn’t believe a word he said but he was damnably sexy and he knew how to use it.  He knew how to play people, so I had to keep him at arm’s length.  And he clearly knew that— whatever I pretended— I _did_ like him.  

Before I could find a response that didn’t involve some level of swearing, he tried again to change the subject.  “`A master deflector,’ huh?”

The almost knowing narrowing of his eyes told me that was a very dangerous question.  I tried to play it off, but found my whole body had tensed.  I was suddenly very aware that there was no one else in the suite.  “Yeah…?”

Max moved quickly towards me, pulling himself forward to sit with his legs folded beneath him and his knees almost touching my thigh.  The motion made me flinch.  I backed against the arm of the couch until I could feel it bruising my leg and Max leaned forward, never allowing more than a foot of space between us.  He rested his hands on his knees, still grinning slyly.  “One thing about working as a prostitute: you get _very_ good at reading people.  I’ve only met one guy better at it and as far as I know, he’s not a hooker.  You’ve got secrets.”  

I couldn’t tell if my heart was pounding because he was balanced in such a way that keeping his balance etched his every muscle in shadows and highlights or because he’d just implied that he might know, or guess my Enclave connections.  It didn’t help that the blanket had fallen completely off the couch or that Max was so close to me that I could feel the heat of his breath.  By some miracle, I kept my voice steady to reply, “Then you’re not as good as you think you are.  I’m really very boring.”

He scoffed and shifted his weight forward until he was kneeling on the couch beside me, his knees against the lateral edge of my thigh, his femurs nearly parallel to my bicep, and his back straight.  Trying to balance on the sofa kept his muscles tense and I realized much later that he’d been intentionally using the skills he’d learned for his dance routines, probably trying to distract me from my questions about his drug use and drinking, but by this point I hardly remembered them.  Kneeling like that lent the shorter man leverage and I couldn’t help but think tactically when he rested a hand on my shoulder to steady himself even though he hardly put any weight on it.  Panic hovered at the back of my mind.  He had me physically outmatched, especially from this angle; even though I was taller, Max was clearly very strong and if he had any combat training at all…  

He kept that confident, maybe arrogant smirk the entire time he spoke.  “Boring people never think they’re boring.  The only people who ever say they’re boring are lying or wrong, and you’re lying.  I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone more interesting.  You have secrets, and not the sort that drunk troopers and tourists like to gossip about.  You have a history, and powerful enemies, possibly armies after you, I know the look.  I wasn’t going to ask but I hardly think you’d shoot me to keep me quiet.  You have this cover like you’re just an ordinary doctor, but you’re running from something, you’ve been running for almost your entire life, but you can still remember a time before you were hunted and that makes it worse because you know what it was like to be safe.”  

I don’t know what I would have done if his mention that he didn’t think I’d shoot him hadn’t reminded me about the plasma defender holstered at my hip.  He was unarmed.  I wasn’t.  

I brought my gun up between us and pressed the muzzle to his chest before he noticed it.  I didn’t know what to say and felt that he’d see how terrified I was if I opened my mouth.  If he forced this, either my secret would be out or I’d have killed him and I’d have to leave.  Even if no one found out and even if they didn’t care, I’m not sure I could live with myself if that happened with Max.  He was the only one who seemed to have found out on his own, I’d been stupid on occasion and let something slip or just made the mistake of trusting someone and been proven wrong, so this wouldn’t be the first time that I’d had to kill so people wouldn’t find out, but it would be the first time that I’d be dealing with someone who hadn’t confronted me already expecting a life or death confrontation.  

But maybe that wasn’t the case.  I saw the reality dawn on him when he felt the muzzle of the plasma defender against his chest, but I didn’t see fear.  Max looked resigned, maybe even pleading.  He said nothing, made no move to stop me, and for a while he didn’t even take his hand off my shoulder.  

“…Were you _trying_ to provoke me?”

I didn’t lower the gun, but his expression shifted.  That jutting brow creased in a stubborn frown.  He let his right hand drop to his lap, joining his left.  He seemed to fold his hands, but I didn’t look too closely; he couldn’t be concealing a weapon in those clothes.  “No.  Are you going to shoot?”  

I sighed.  The caution that had been drilled into me all my life— and thoroughly reinforced by every time I had ignored it— screamed that I couldn’t let him live…but I wasn’t certain how much he knew.  Besides, this was Max, who apparently never left the Lucky 38.  Who would he tell, even if he did know?  That was stupid, he had plenty of people he could tell and more than enough ways to end me.  I wanted to trust them, and I wanted to trust the courier, but I couldn’t be certain that everyone would remain friendly if they knew.  Even if they did, with the way Cass spoke when she got drunk…  And Max was often just as drunk, often with Cass, if he knew… if Cass found out…  I couldn’t risk it.  

I steeled myself and glimpsed what might have been acceptance in Max’s gaze as the elevator arrived at the suite and opened.  Both of us froze.  If I shot him now…  Well, best case scenario I’d have to claim that he attacked me unarmed or dosed himself with Psycho, and then I’d feel guilty for the lie as much as for killing him; worst case Veronica, or just anyone who happened to be arriving right now would shoot me for attacking him, whether or not my shot proved fatal.  Granted, I hardly expected Max to survive at this range.  

My hesitation spared his life.  Rather than stopping by the kitchen or rec room, the drunk and chattering group of our friends walked straight towards us.  I knew they were in the doorway behind me when Max’s gaze flicked up, breaking eye contact for the first time since this started.  I started to pull my gun away from him before replacing it in its holster, but didn’t get a chance before it was seen.  Cass shouted first, “What the hell?”

She nearly drowned out Lucia and Veronica, who both realized why Max wasn’t smiling, for once, and rushed towards us with three different cries.  The courier yelled, “Max!” while Lilly mistook him for her grandson again.  Raul and presumably Boone restrained her, probably saving me from a very violent death at the hands of a sharpened vertibird rotor.  

Veronica was less predictable than Lucia, who jerked my wrist upwards while the engineer hauled Max off the couch with a scream of, “Gabriel!”  I think I was the only one who really processed Max’s actual name right then, everyone else was too distracted by what I’d been doing.  I glimpsed the prostitute standing behind Veronica, who had rounded on me.  He hadn’t resisted when she’d dragged him to his feet or gotten between us and now he just stood perfectly still, watching me blankly.  I didn’t have much time to wonder why he seemed unfazed before Lucia grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face her.  

“What happened?”

Somewhere to my right, Raul and Boone walked Lilly into the kitchen to calm her down and I tried to come up with some excuse.  I heard Veronica ask Max the same question and felt grateful when he didn’t respond.  I looked past Lucia to see why, wondering if he meant to keep my secret or if he was just too upset or dazed to answer.  Neither, he’d retrieved his vodka and paused to drink, leaning against a desk in the corner.  He was still frowning at me, but now I frowned back.  His drinking bothered me even more if it meant he might tell the wrong person whatever he knew about me.  

Ignoring Lucia, I stood up, addressing Max.  “Can you stop that?”

Vero frowned and wondered aloud, “Is that what this is about?”

Max scowled and spoke over her.  “I’ve been drinking for years, that isn’t going to change.”  He wasn’t shaken at all, or if he was he hid it incredibly well; he just sounded pissed off.  

“Is this what your fight was about?” Lucia queried, repeating Veronica’s question.  

Max and I answered at once.  “Yes,” I insisted, hoping to give her an answer so she wouldn’t pry any further.  

“No.”  Max scowled, but didn’t move from the desk.  Maybe it would be better to make something up, the courier probably wouldn’t believe this had just been provoked by his drinking; I hadn’t tried to shoot Cass.  

Both of us reversed our initial stance before Lucia could ask us about it.  

Cass eyed us suspiciously.  “Uh-huh…”

“Alright,” Lucia insisted when neither myself nor Max volunteered any further explanation, “one of you is going to explain why I came back to find you about to shoot him or so help me…!”  

I guess she figured that the open-ended threat would sway us, but we stayed silent.  Personally, I was sure that anything Lucia would conceive of as a punishment would pale in comparison to most of our lives.  I still saw her as naive.  

Realizing her ploy wouldn’t work, Lucia scowled and sighed.  “Veronica,” she gestured, “Take Max into my room and close the door.  Try to figure out what the hell happened?”  The courier turned to me as Max and Veronica left the room.  “What happened?”

“Max…”  The man had plenty of obnoxious qualities, I just had to pick one.  Actually, I didn’t even need to do that.  I shook my head.  “He’s just _infuriating_.”

“Infuriating or not,” Lucia sighed, “I didn’t think you’d actually try to shoot him.”  She folded her arms and somehow managed to look almost commanding, despite the fact that Lucia usually had all the aggression of a butterfly.  “Can you work with him?  Or, if I lock you two in the same room with a gun, is he going to end up dead?”

“Are you planning to start a blood sport?”  I sighed as her serious stare didn’t flinch.  “Joking aside, he… frustrates me, and he knows how to get under my skin.  And I’m not sure he cares about his own safety, he might actually be _trying_ to get himself killed, so it was probably a good thing he hasn’t been left alone with Boone.”  

Lucia considered that and nodded.  “Just punch him next time.”

She had to be kidding.  “Oh, what an excellent deterrent, that’s clearly the best solution.”  

“Don’t shoot him,” Lucia insisted as she walked towards her room.  “I’ll have Cass and Vero keep an eye on you so this doesn’t happen again, but I like to think that you’re better than that.”  I nodded.  She was playing to my sense of morality, not that I realized at the time how often she did that.  The courier paused with one hand on the doorknob.  “…would you have shot him if we hadn’t interrupted you?”

For a moment, I hesitated.  If I lied, she might not bother to keep us apart, or she might even try to encourage conflict, viewing this as playful teasing, despite the live ammo.  If I told the truth, she could realize there was more to this argument than I’d admitted.  But Lucia was innocent.  I didn’t think she’d read that much into it.  “Yes.”

After a long, surprised pause, she nodded.  “Don’t shoot him.”  The courier entered her room and shut the door behind her.  I went to sleep uneasy and plagued by the idea that I’d almost murdered a man.

*       *       *

“Did you provoke him?”  The courier addressed me as soon as she shut the door, silencing Veronica and I midway through a very hushed argument.  I’d intentionally avoided being alone with Veronica because I’d expected her criticism.  We were family, literally as well as metaphorically and we bickered constantly for a lot of reasons, some more important than others.  We both shut up to face the courier.  

“Yes… sort of.”  

Veronica, who seemed to have trusted that the whole conflict had been a misunderstanding, gaped at me.  “What?  _Why?_ ”

“I crossed a line,” I admitted, intentionally keeping the explanation vague.  Hopefully Lucia would assume I did something sexual; I didn’t expect her to realize how well I could read people.  

Lucia sighed.  I couldn’t be certain whether she genuinely accepted my explanation or if she planned to punish or “persuade” me later.  I hoped I might avoid her wrath if I remained as composed and cooperative as possible.  She asked a few more questions that clarified nothing for either of us.  I gave nothing away and neither would she.  At length, she gave up and sighed.  “Can you work with him?  If I leave you two together, are you gonna try to kill him?”

“No, I’m not going to try to kill him.  We’ll be fine.”

Veronica eyed me incredulously, “He had a gun to your chest, Gabr—!”

“ _Max_.” I corrected her again, but Lucia spoke first.  

“Did you think he was really going to shoot you?”

I considered and shrugged.  If I was honest, Vero would flip out and I’d never hear the end of it.  I just wanted to be left in peace.  That was all I’d _ever_ wanted.  “Not really.”

Lucia looked at Veronica and waved towards the door.  “Keep an eye on Arcade?  If you can, get Cass to do the same and take turns.  I want to make sure we don’t have another fight on our hands.”  

I figured that was really code for “keep an eye on Arcade _and Max_ ” but I didn’t protest, it made sense, at least from her perspective.  It might have made sense to me as well, if I actually cared.  Yesterday, I hadn’t wanted to die, but yesterday had been a better day.  Today I wasn’t so sure.  

Once Veronica left, Lucia shoved me back onto the bed and I expected things to progress the way they had the other night, until she left me there and started sorting through her guns.  Was she going to kill me?  I was more trouble than I was worth now, I supposed, she must have only interrupted because she couldn’t ruin her innocent facade.  If she just let me die, the others might become suspicious, but they’d believe…  They’d believe what?  Veronica would never accept that I’d attacked her and it would look suspicious to Arcade.  Even if I just disappeared, she couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t involved.  So then why was she rummaging in her gun locker like she wanted to find something?

“I got the formula for Lilly’s medicine,” Lucia remarked casually.  

“…good?”

She noticed the reason for my uncertainty, looked up and giggled.  “I’m not going to kill you, silly, you’re not as useful dead.”  She hefted a relatively large pistol as she spoke, as if the gun didn’t refute that assurance.  “You’re gonna make Lilly’s meds from now on, starting tomorrow night.  But I’ve got something else for you to do first, are you good with robots?”  

I desperately hoped she could not see how much that question alarmed me.  I played dumb.  “Yeah, I can usually figure them out, why?”  Had she noticed my modifications to House’s tech?

Lucia hopped onto the bed, straddling me and still holding her pistol.  “I’m taking you to Cerulean Robotics tomorrow.  You’re going to get me anything you can, repair any ‘bots they’ve got, and build anything helpful from the spare parts.”  She pulled my shorts down to my knees as she spoke.  

“Is this really the best thing to talk about during sex?”  As soon as I spoke, she had her pistol aimed at my face and I heard her chamber a round.  This was entirely more dangerous than anything I’d done at the Gomorra, up to and including the private show with an unloaded service rifle because some NCR soldiers were fucking kinky.  

“You aren’t going to shoot.  You just said you want me alive.”

So quickly I couldn’t follow the motion, Lucia flipped that pistol in her hand and smacked it across my face.  I heard her shift her grip on it again and when my eyes stopped streaming, I found her aiming at my shoulder.  “I won’t shoot your _face_ , though that might have earned you more customers.”  

I bit back the urge to insist I wasn’t _that_ ugly with a crude joke; I’d rather not deal with a gunshot she’d probably want me to hide.  When I shut up, Lucia’s free hand slid over my hips, just feeling the muscles for a moment, although I fully expected this to get painful soon enough.  

She grabbed my cock and tried to get me hard.  It worked, but she was very rough about it; her knuckles smacked against the bruises on my crotch and half the time her efforts just hurt from how tightly she gripped me.  The wasteland had left her skin rough, which happened to most people, and it wasn’t very pleasant having a calloused hand clenched around something so tender and moving this quickly.  I kept my skin moisturized meticulously and right now I regretted that.  But this still wasn’t the level of torture I’d expected from her.  

Lucia swung herself forward and rode me, slapping a hand across my mouth to keep me silent.  She got herself off twice until I came and I couldn’t bring myself to even try to help her along.  Apparently that was a mistake.  We came simultaneously and that pistol struck my jaw before she’d even caught her breath.  “What was that?” Lucia snapped, still panting as she knelt on my hips, my now-flaccid cock still inside her.  

“What?”

That pistol came back from the other direction and I knew I’d have some pretty serious bruises under my hair and stubble.  “ _That_.” Lucia snapped, “You think you can just lay there and do nothing?  I know you’re better at this!”

I wanted to point out that I’d never been enthusiastic about the whole idea, but couldn’t quite overcome the last of my pitiful sense of self preservation.  “Sorry.”  

I raised my hands in surrender and half expected her to take my bracers permanently, but she didn’t.  Her eyes narrowed.  “I was thinking I might go easy on you today, after all, you were nearly shot, but now I don’t think I will.”  She raised that pistol and I fully expected her to shoot me. 


	6. Blue Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sore hand made art difficult today, so not to overwhelm anyone, but I wrote kind of a lot. >_>' After these few chapters, the next should take a while, so feel free to take your time reading them. Although I am sort of excited for my next idea, so I might end up finishing this whole thing quickly now that I've said that. 

The next morning, breakfast was awkward.  I noticed Max asleep on the couch and Veronica eyed me warily until I left the room.  That made everything so much worse.  Even if Veronica and Max probably weren’t biologically related, she acted like I’d wronged her family and before this she’d probably been the closest thing I had to a friend around here, aside from Lucia.  I did consider the courier a friend, although she probably wasn’t too happy with me either at the moment.  The courier had already left and so had Raul, who’d presumably returned to his shack.  I heard Lilly jabbering to her grandchildren in the rec room but didn’t approach her incase she remembered last night clearly enough to attack me.  I found Boone in the kitchen, having a beer with his bowl of cereal.  I wanted to remark how everyone seemed to be alcoholics, but I wasn’t really in a position to start an argument right now.  And Boone, whatever his history, was the only one who didn’t look mad at me.  At least, no more than usual.  He’d never liked Max so I doubt he would have cared if I really had shot the prostitute.  I think he’d taken Max’s theory that the NCR had been infiltrated as a personal affront or else he just hated the man on principle.  Max never seemed to like the NCR very much and neither did I, but even I had to admit that I was more amicable than the deceitful and often impish addict.  Boone nodded a greeting as I got my own bowl of cereal and a bottle of purified water.  On the other side of the table, Cass frowned at me.  

“What did he do?”

“You know him,” I responded, trying to deflect the question, “what do you think he did?”

Cass’s frown became a very amused grin.  

I scowled at her.  “Do you really think I would have tried to shoot him for making a move on me?  A guy probably two-thirds my age who looks like _that_?”  Her frown returned.  “Yeah, exactly.”

Cass uncapped a bottle of whiskey and sipped it as she mused, “…Good point.”

“Of course.”  Nobody could _possibly_ resist sex when it was offered.  I didn’t bother saying that aloud, it would just start an argument I really didn’t need right now.  I ate my cereal and watched Cass drink her liquid breakfast.  “I’d really appreciate it if you’d at least wait until after breakfast to start drinking.”

Cass slammed the bottle on the table, but I don’t think she was angry so much as drunk.  “That’s really what this’s all about?”  She gestured towards the bedroom where Max was probably still asleep, sloshing her whiskey across the table in the process.  Boone lifted his bowl to avoid the liquor and set it back down in the puddle as if nothing had happened.  “Max drinks as much as I do, why haven’t you tried to shoot me?”

I groaned and rested my face in my hands, rubbing my eyes beneath my glasses.  “Cass, do you _want_ me to shoot you?”  Both of them tensed and I sighed.  “I’m not _going_ to shoot you, I just… Max brings it out in me.  And I really would rather you drink a little less, Cass, you have a problem.  _Both_ of you.”  Boone’s minimal expression creased into a slightly more threatening frown and I clarified, “Max and Cass.  I can only handle so many addicts at a time.”

Cass scowled and left the room.  She grumbled, “It’s not a _problem_.”

They left me pretty much alone for the next few hours.  Boone finished his meal and went into the rec room, possibly to clean his rifle because he was bored.  I heard Lilly yelling, having mistaken him for her grandson.  She did that more and more often lately.  Max had only just started making her medicine, but I had much less confidence in him than in Doc Henry.  Maybe he’d somehow botched the recipe and it didn’t work.  

For three hours I debated the pros and cons of asking him, but Lily herself wasn’t the most reliable source and no one else would know.  I’d heard the elevator twice and it turned out that not only had Boone left, but so had both Lily and Veronica.  I found Max asleep where I’d left him, guarded by Cass, who’d passed out drunk on the couch beside his.  If I still wanted to shoot him, I could.  

But I didn’t.  Even if yesterday wouldn’t advertise my guilt, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what I’d almost done since I’d been stopped.  I’d panicked.  I wasn’t even sure how much he knew, he’d just scared me.  If I killed him, I’d never get over it.  He sold information, supposedly, but at the moment he didn’t leave the Lucky 38 and as far as I could tell, he had no need of money.  He could get anything he needed if he only asked, he had no reason to sell information and I don’t think he had any goals at all, aside from his own relative peace and comfort.  However he’d figured it out, I’d spent half the night wondering why Max had told me what he knew.  If he’d wanted to sell it or use it against me, it didn’t make sense to tell me.  He might have felt just as panicked as I had, or maybe not quite that much.  I had been asking very persistently; if his drug abuse was a serious problem, he could be afraid to admit it.  Or that might be tied to whatever led him to believe that he was dying.  Or maybe he wasn’t dying at all; he’d known I was armed and basically backed me into a corner to confront me.  The more I thought about it, the more I suspected that he’d intended for me to kill him.  That pissed me off as much as anything else about the whole incident, if not more.  I wasn’t about to give him what he wanted if that theory proved true.  

And if it didn’t…  What he’d said haunted me.  If he’d just been trying to kill himself or even if he hadn’t, he’d been right.  So much of what he’d said about me had been completely true, he’d basically laid out my life in a few seconds of conversation.  But he hadn’t blatantly stated that I’d been born into the Enclave, so either he didn’t know or he’d intentionally used pathos to appeal to me.  He was so accurate, could he really have read that much detail just from the way I acted?  Or was he in the same situation?  It wasn’t like Enclave personnel and their families had some sort of code word to identify each other.  He had medical knowledge, beyond what I’d expect from a man cooking chems, and he wasn’t a Follower.  He’d also implied that he’d hacked the elevator to gain access to the rest of the building.  Knowledge of technology and chemistry, to that degree, wouldn’t be unusual for someone raised by, say, Enclave scientists?  Thinking about it, he’d fled to Lucia, not the NCR, not Freeside, not anywhere else.  Maybe the NCR were after him.  Maybe he’d reasoned that this was the safest place as the courier didn’t know his past any more than she knew mine.  But how could I find out?

He wasn’t just going to tell me, even if he got drunk, he hadn’t slipped up so far.  I’d have to earn his trust, and that would be a long time coming if he hadn’t really been trying to kill himself last night.  And I couldn’t let him know my history until I was sure, which complicated things even further.  

I sat on a chair beside Max’s couch, careful not to wake Cass.  She was snoring loudly, sprawled across the sofa with her whiskey on the ground beside her.  I was glad the courier had taken Rex with her today; I didn’t need to find out how cyber dogs tolerated alcohol.  

Max lay perfectly still under his blanket, his face a little more pale and his eyes a little more sunken than they’d looked yesterday.  The skin of his jaw appeared almost purple beneath the stubble, a barely visible but severe bruise.  It didn’t quite reach his scar.  I wondered what had happened to him.  

Deciding that Cass wasn’t about to wake up, I reached out and spoke softly, “Max?”

I shook his shoulder.  He had the blanket pulled up to his neck; when I shook him one hand tumbled off the couch and slipped free of the faded golden wool, resting awkwardly on the rug.  His pale skin formed a dramatic contrast with the blue tinge of his fingertips.  Leaving my hand on his shoulder, I studied his hands and ran through my medical knowledge.  What exactly did he have?  Was he sick, or was this just a symptom of his drug use?  Was he even really using drugs, or just treating whatever he had?  This could be a symptom of anything from carpal tunnel to MS.  Or it could just be due to his anorexia, if he really was anorexic.  Or maybe he was just cold.  I glanced around for a warmer alternative to the couch, finding only the beds, before I realized that my hand had barely moved.  

I grabbed his wrist without fully processing who I was dealing with.  He had to be hypothermic, his hand felt as cold as the water bottles in the fridge.  I’d been drilled for years on how to handle unconscious patients and I reached for his neck as I realized that his bracers stopped me from checking his pulse on his wrist.  His collar proved even more problematic and the way he was lying made it difficult to reach the buckle.  I grabbed his hand and had his bracer untied in less than a second.  I forced it up to his elbow as soon as it would move and only let myself see the lattice of lines along his skin once I found the subtle motion of the artery.  Max was alive.  

At first I thought he must have overdosed and pulled the blanket down to his waist to listen for any sign of fluid in his lungs and check his heart.  His lungs were fine and I got the gist of what had happened while I leaned over him with the stethoscope.  The already dirty white couch had turned a deep crimson beneath him.  My first thought was rape, but between myself, Boone, and Raul, I quickly dismissed that.  The bruise on his jaw must have been caused by a bleeding disorder, probably related to whatever disease he expected to die from.  He needed a stimpak fast, and he might need a blood transfusion even after that.  

I strapped a super stimpak to his thigh before even trying to determine if he was still bleeding.  Whether he’d clotted or not, it didn’t matter; if he had, he’d still need the medicine and if he hadn’t he probably wouldn’t survive without it long enough for me to stop the bleed.  I only made sure the blood on his clothes was dry.  On his skin, he had bruises but no obvious bleeds, leaving options I didn’t want to investigate for both our sakes.  As long as there was no fresh blood, he had clotted and trying to find the source might just make him bleed more.  His shorts were absolutely ruined.  

I sat on the floor beside Max.  He’d barely even admitted that he was sick.  This sort of evidence wouldn’t be easy to hide and I doubt he wanted everyone to know he might be dying.  The bruises and the lack of shorts could be explained; we’d gotten in a fight or he’d gotten drunk and hurt himself and he’d been cold or decided to do laundry.  With the blanket draped over him, the blood on the couch was hidden, but someone would notice as soon as he got up.  He’d only soaked one cushion so I could probably clean that up, and as soon as the stimpak did its job, I needed to move him anyway.  His body temperature would have dropped significantly and it would take a while to warm him back up; I should move him to the bed.  I could get the couch looking relatively normal before he woke.  

I pondered what he’d said for another half hour until the stimpak was empty and I felt safe carrying Max to one of the beds.  He hadn’t stirred and I didn’t expect him to.  If he was really as smart as he seemed to be, he’d realize that I’d helped him, but I wouldn’t have let him die even if he would never have figured that out, especially not after last night.  He wasn’t going to wake up for at least a few hours and he didn’t even move.  His arm flopped across the space between the beds as I set him down, partly blocking my path back to the couch.  The bracer I’d loosened hung by a nearly un-woven lace.  A worn strip of leather rested over a pale scar, one of the dozens that etched his forearm in both directions.  I laced the bracer and tied it the way he usually did, preserving at least that much of the sad man’s dignity.  It made sense how he might have ended up like this, even if I didn’t believe that he was right.  

*       *       *

I woke sore and cold, with a pounding headache and an intense hatred of every sound I could hear in the relatively quiet suite.  My stomach gnawed at itself like an un-oiled engine and something in my abdomen spasmed and stung, but those were old pains.  I felt an ache like a bruise inside, and that’s probably what it was, it almost trumped the constant feeling like I’d been stabbed in the gut.  Muscles moved only grudgingly and my thoughts were hazy and sluggish, but I hadn’t really expected to wake at all.  

My left thigh felt more bruised than my right.  That was a familiar sensation as well, just not one I’d felt recently.  I’d been injected with something, a lot of something.  A super stimpak, I guessed, running my fingers along the skin and finding the faint trace of a strap’s imprint on my thigh.  Veronica?

I eased my eyelids open just a little, scrunching up my face at the blinding light.  I was in one of the beds.  Someone had moved me.  I was alone, or at least I couldn’t see anyone around me and the minimized agony of my ears suggested the rest of this room was also empty.  Veronica would have never left me alone if she’d seen, and whoever attached a stimpak to my upper thigh _must_ have seen.  …Arcade?

Granted, it wasn’t rocket science to use a super stimpak, but I hardly expected that Cass or Lily would have done it so expertly.  And Boone and Raul had little to no interest in keeping me healthy.  Lucia might have, but I didn’t expect that she would have bothered to move me off the couch, or would have dared inject me out in the open unless she’d been trying to frame someone for what she’d done to me.  And I suspect she’d have made it more visible if that had been her intention.  

I rolled onto my side and used my arms to force myself into a sitting position.  Any movement of my abdomen agonized me even more than usual, but I needed to get into something that wasn’t caked in blood.  

*       *       *

I felt it would be best to keep some distance between myself and Max just so Cass and Veronica didn’t start thinking I was waiting for a chance to kill him.  I watched Max just long enough to be sure that he wasn’t going to start bleeding again and then I cleaned up the couch and left.  Conveniently, Cass rolled off the other couch in her sleep, spilling her whiskey and giving me a chance to swap cushions.  Nobody would be surprised if they though Cass had made a mess and spilt her whiskey on the couch, or even been sick.  I didn’t dare try to move her back because in her drunken stupor she’d probably lash out and almost certainly roll right back to the floor, but she provided a convenient explanation for the couch cushion I left soaking in the bath tub in a mix of water and detergent.  

It was still soaking when Veronica returned a few hours later.  She checked the suite, no doubt making sure I hadn’t shot Max while Cass had been asleep, and I expected her to just stay there to guard him, but she came into the kitchen where I was reading.  I kept a few medical texts in the suite, mostly because it got incredibly boring just waiting around for the courier with the same few magazines I’d already read dozens of times; I was browsing an encyclopedia of vascular disease right now, mostly speculating about what Max might have.  Veronica sat down across from me.  I glanced up long enough to see her frown and didn’t go back to reading, expecting some kind of talk about yesterday.  

“What happened between you two?”

And there it was.  I put a playing card in the book to mark the page and closed it as I figured out how much to admit.  “We had an argument.”

“About what?” Veronica persisted, “You don’t point a gun at people over a normal argument.  _Especially_ you!”

I sighed.  “Veronica, I’d rather not talk about it.”

“I can’t just…”  She gestured in exasperation, “Are you going to try to shoot him again?”

“No.”  I answered so quickly and certainly that I guess it surprised her.  She fell silent for that moment and neither of us continued the conversation because a shuffling I’d taken to be Cass proved to be Max as he stumbled into the kitchen.  

For the first time, Max wore decently normal clothing.  He’d put on the shirt and pants that I’d gotten him along with a jacket he must have somehow retrieved for himself.  He hadn’t shaved, but he’d cleaned himself up and combed his hair, leaving it dark and silky, combed forward and up and gleaming like polished gold even in the low light of the suite.  His suit had been perfectly folded and left him looking like some sort of pre-war gentleman, even though I realized he hadn’t removed his collar or bracers.  He had cuff-links that might have been real gold and a tie more pristine than anything I’d seen in Vegas.  The effect proved stunning, even if it worried me.  

Veronica voiced my thoughts, though she sounded more amused than concerned, “Special occasion?”

“No.”  Max had lost even the faintest trace of his usual forced cheer.  His countenance hung in an expression so despondent that “frown” didn’t do it justice; the near-lifeless scowl drew his brow even lower and left his blocky, square jaw jutting slightly forward and locked against gritted teeth.  He had his mouth closed, but I could see the tension and knew he had to be in agony.  I wanted to ask if he planned to take something for that, but didn’t want to bring it up around Veronica.  As far as I knew, Max had kept my secret, even though he probably shared it; I didn’t want to announce his illness to everyone.  

Max stumbled into the room and groggily opened the cabinet where he kept his vodka.  Finding it empty, the no-doubt-hung-over prostitute scowled at me and grumbled something in a language even I didn’t recognize.  Veronica frowned, “Was that Russian?”

Max nodded.  “Seemed appropriate.”

“What did you say?”  

Max balanced on the counter to reach the higher cabinets, “I said `Where vodka?’”

“You’re going to hurt yourself trying to get it like that,” I insisted and stood to help him before Veronica could voice similar concerns.  

Max shot me a more lethal glare than I’d though him capable of, but he stumbled as I reached him and let me help him down off the counter.  Feigning congeniality with none of his usual skill, Max suggested, “Well, as I am currently unable to search, would you kindly retrieve my vodka from wherever you’ve hidden it?”

“Why do you think Arcade—?” Veronica began and I corrected her.  

“I did.”  I frowned, hoping Max wouldn’t be so disoriented by his pain as to let slip what he knew in front of Veronica.  “Max, I hardly think you need any anticoagulants right now.”

“It’s only a mild one,” he countered immediately and he sounded coherent enough that I couldn’t tell if he was thinking clearly or if this was just an addict arguing for another fix.  “Or would you prefer I synthesize dipyridamole?”

“Yes, alcohol _is_ more mild than aspirin— which, by the way, you don’t _need_ to call dipyridamole— but you _could_ just take Med-X, which has the benefit of _not_ being an anticoagulant at all.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly, showing a trace of more genuine anger than I’d ever seen from him before.  “I _can’t_.”

“So you’re self-medicating with vodka?”  I was surprised more than outraged.  If he had some reason he couldn’t take Med-X, if he was allergic to it or something, aspirin, and possibly alcohol really might be the next best thing, though that certainly wasn’t a method I’d recommend… 

Veronica chimed in.  Apparently, she’d been paying attention even if she didn’t understand that entire conversation; in retrospect, I suspected that Max had used the more obscure term for aspirin so she wouldn’t know what he was talking about.  “You self-medicate with vodka?  Max, is that why—?”

“Yes,” he snapped.  For a long moment he scowled at me furiously but before I’d decided whether or not I could find some alternative for him, he sighed.  Pain and frustration had lent his normally rugged features an almost commanding quality, but now that faded and he just looked broken.  I wondered who he might have been when he was healthy.  Maybe Veronica only judged his life so harshly because she’d known him before it had taken this toll on him.  Max turned and shuffled back towards the hallway, “If you feel like giving my vodka back, I’ll be on my couch.”

The elevator must have arrived while we’d been speaking because he nearly ran into the courier.  Max’s sullen demeanor vanished so quickly that I don’t think Lucia even saw it.  He gave her that crooked smile and bowed playfully, “The victorious queen returns.”  I would have thought he was mocking her, except he had no reason to do that and Lucia responded with some kind of regal attempt at a curtsy, though she clearly had never seen one.  It struck me that Max must have seen bows like that in old holotapes, which meant he’d had access to holotapes at some point in his life and reinforced my theory about him.  Right now he was making something up, probably to conceal what we’d been talking about and distract Lucia.  What I’d seen of them in the past few days suggested she’d been taken in by his charm and probably didn’t or wouldn’t see what he’d been doing to himself.  

Lucia laughed, “Well, _someone_ ’s been reading `Tales of Chivalry.’”

“Guilty as charged,” Max replied, his mask of a smile never faltering.  The whole exchange seemed too saccharine for him and had all the sincerity of a poker table now that I’d learned how to tell when he was lying.  Lucia hooked a finger under his collar to pull him forward and she must have scratched him, judging from how he winced.  She didn’t notice and looked from me to Veronica.  

“Are Cass or Boone here?”

Veronica frowned.  “Cass is passed out in the bedroom and I haven’t seen Boone in days.  Do you think he’s alright?”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Lucia dismissed before turning to me, “Arcade, you won’t shoot Max if I ask you to come with us, will you?”

Veronica frowned in concern and spoke before I could, “You sure that’s a good idea, Lucy?”

Lucia nodded, cutting me off a second time, “I’d appreciate someone else who can shoot and Raul won’t be back for days.”

“Why not just give Max a gun?”  It was Veronica, and she realized I’d still been trying to say something by my scowl as she finished her suggestion.  “Sorry.”

“I’m a terrible shot,” Max admitted, not noticing me.  He dropped his voice to add, “Especially at the moment.”

When I could finally talk, I pointed out, “I’m not going to shoot Max.  I’ve been basically alone with him all day, if I wanted to shoot him, he’d already be dead.”  Maybe not the most comforting way of putting it, but Max glanced my way as I spoke and I glimpsed what might have been a slightly more genuine smile before he went back to watching Lucia with his usual smirk.  

“Good,” Lucia resolved, beaming, “then we’re off to Cerulean Robotics.”


	7. Cerulean Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah the chapter title and the previous chapter's title are sort of a joke, I was tempted to go with the song "Blue Morning, Blue Day," even though that doesn't fit overly well.   
> Also, be warned this chapter gets dark even for my work. >_>'

All the way there I tried to have her explain exactly what she expected us to do at Cerulean Robotics, but to no avail.  Both of us knew where that was, so Lucia and I kept pace with each other, walking on either side of Max who strode through the streets in his suit, smirking as usual.  He managed to move so gracefully despite what must have been excruciating pain; I could see the tension in his jaw and abdomen even though he hid it expertly.  I had to wonder how often he’d been in pain like this before and I hadn’t noticed.  

With Lucia’s service rifle and my plasma defender we made short work of the rats in the factory and left Max to have a look around.  

After her dismissive insistence that I’d “see” I hardly expected Lucia to explain why we’d come here now, but I asked anyway, “ _Now_ are you going to tell me what we’re supposed to be doing here?”

To my surprise, Lucia nodded to Max.  “Max?”

The lean young man raised an eyebrow questioningly.  

“Tell him.”

Ignoring my incredulity that they apparently hadn’t trusted me with this until now, Max gestured around the crumbling building.  “Aside from the obvious structural damage, most of the machinery is intact.  The basic components would be decently worth salvaging and I can repair and reprogram those protectrons using materials already around here and that terminal, but if you really want, and if the building can be reinforced so it doesn’t collapse, this same machinery could be rigged to manufacture more protectrons, eyebots, sentrybots, or maybe securitrons.”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one stunned by that explanation.  Lucia frowned skeptically at Max.  “ _You_ could do that?”

He shrugged.  “Theoretically.  I’m not too familiar with the construction or programming of securitrons; they might involve some alloy or polymer that would be difficult to synthesize here, but I’m familiar enough with most standard `bots that, given raw materials and a structurally sound work environment, I’m sure I could set up an assembly line using these parts.”

This sounded absurd.  He had to be bluffing, so I pointed out the obvious, “Powered by what?”

“Well the dam could theoretically handle it if power’s diverted from Helios 1, the Strip, and NCR facilities,” Max casually supposed, “but that would leave most of the Mojave with minimal electricity and the Archimedes would be rendered inoperable, so it would be much better to just use the Lucky 38’s main reactor.”

Lucia reacted before I could and more calmly.  “The Lucky 38 can’t power the Strip, it can’t power more than the securitrons and its own systems.”

Max shook his head and cut off my protest that the Archimedes was better left without power and that as it was we weren’t in the best position to divert the kind of power he was talking about.  “Not with just the emergency generators.  The main reactor’s offline, my guess is that House’s defense systems caused it to overload during the Great War, but all my projections suggest that the system had an off-site facility which can restart the reactor given proper input; I haven’t been able to locate such a system myself, but House must have records somewhere, perhaps Yes Man can access them?”

Lucia frowned at him and the girl actually looked suspicious.  “You’re sure there _is_ a main reactor and it isn’t just what we have running right now?”

“Yes.”

Crossing her hands over her chest, the courier actually looked threatening as she insisted, “Max, how exactly do you know all this?”  

He shrugged evasively and I swear I saw actual fear in his eyes.  The Enclave was disbanded, right?  Why _did_ he know this?  Was there some chance that a branch still existed and he’d been sent here to investigate or spy?  Maybe he just used what he’d learned to great effect.  If he was the child of Enclave scientists, they might have figured this out and told him even without any sort of orders.  “I’m just very good at figuring things out.”  Lucia scowled, the first time I’d seen her look angry even if it came off as a child’s pout, and Max elaborated.  “I knew the current level of power wouldn’t have been sufficient to protect the city during the Great War and a basic investigation of the Lucky 38— viewed through binoculars from across the street— reveals inoperable defenses that need more power to function.  Besides, House wouldn’t have built a system which would degrade this much intentionally, he’s all about immortality and preparing for the future.  He has to have a more powerful generator which is not functioning right now.”  

Lucia accepted that.  She nodded.  “Salvage anything you can make into something without the machines and let’s go.  I’ll see what I can do to keep this place safe and locked from anyone else who might try to use it.”  Max did as he was told and I followed him, just in case he found another giant rat that hadn’t come after us yet.  

“If you can repair robots that easily, why were you working at the Gomorrah?”

“Because I like sex.”

“I figured that much,” I answered, sighing internally at his constant deflections, “but you could have sex without doing it for money.  Did you even have any say who you slept with?”

He scowled over his shoulder, dropping his facade because Lucia was inspecting the door, trying to figure out a way to lock it.  “That’s not what you’re really asking.  You want to know why I never mentioned this or used it.  The answer’s simple.  I couldn’t see any reason to bother.”

I wanted to explain how he was wrong, or just tell him that he couldn’t think like that, but  Lucia could walk over here at any moment and I hesitated.  

*       *       *

I saw the outrage and pity warring in his mind and I chuckled dryly.  “I figured that’s how you’d react.  Stop worrying so much.”  I gathered the last of the good scrap into the satchel Lucia had given me and slung it over my back as the courier walked back towards us.  “That’s everything I can take back to the suite, are we going?”

She joked, “You want to stay here with the dead rats?”

Arcade and I both chuckled enough that I doubt she realized we’d just been talking about anything serious.  I knew that he knew.  Even if he hadn’t figured it out on his own, I took off my bracers every day when I woke up, before I washed my face, and he’d tied my bracer with the left lace over the right, not the other way around, as I always did.  It had taken me a few moments to notice why it seemed different.  He knew what I’d done to myself, even if I hadn’t done that recently, and he probably feared that I might try it again.  

I know he was thinking about that as we walked back to the suite in silence with Lucia beside us.  We’d nearly reached the Strip when desperate thugs ambushed us from all sides.  

“Arcade!”  He turned around at Lucia’s yell and both of them started shooting before my pounding headache let me realize what was happening.  Two of the thugs fell, one shot and one liquified before I saw the other two charging towards us from the front.  

I shouted Arcade’s name without even considering any other cry and heard Lucia shoot the fifth thug behind me as Arcade started to turn. He noticed the thug to my right and took aim without noticing the one on our left.  I glimpsed the gleam of a straight razor and ducked past him.  

*       *       *

I only noticed as I pulled the trigger that Max wasn’t looking at the thug I thought he’d warned me about.  He ducked under my arm and I glimpsed an odd motion.  He swiped his left hand across the palm of his right and pulled something off of it before lunging upwards in what I initially mistook for an uppercut.  Max performed a palm strike that proved he’d actually had some form of combat training and instead of the typical momentary daze and ensuing fight, his palm had barely touched the man when I heard a burst of energy.  The thug dropped, dead and sizzling to the pavement.  Steam rose from his corpse and perfumed the air with the stink of burnt flesh.  

If I hadn’t been so disturbed by his apparently unarmed attack, I’d have been much more distracted by the face that it had left him standing so close to me that me that his crotch brushed my thigh.  Ducking beneath the arms holding my gun, he’d stepped over the leg I had forward and ended up straddling it to strike the man behind me.  To make matters worse, this left him off-balance and I couldn’t back up without moving my arms and possibly knocking him over.  

Lucia turned around and chuckled, apparently failing to notice the corpse.  “Well, come on, lovebirds, let’s get back to the suite!”  She stepped towards us and then she saw it and frowned at Max.  “How’d you do that?”

The prostitute struggled to balance while I stepped back and reholstered my plasma defender.  His struggle failed and I caught him before he fell over completely.  I was careful not to touch his right hand.  

Regaining his footing, Max showed Lucia his palm in the least threatening way he could manage.  “It’s basically a zap glove in the form of an implant,” he explained somewhere between his facade of happiness and genuine fear.  “The device draws power from body heat and neuroelectric energy, discharging it as electricity through this wire.  Everything’s very insulated in my palm, but I have this to cover the wire so I don’t electrocute myself.”  He held up a small ball of some kind of pink polymer that camouflaged perfectly with his skin and set about carefully coating the wire.  

I stared at him, dumbfounded.  “Max, that’s exceedingly dangerous.”

“Not as dangerous as being unarmed in the Gomorrah.”

“…fair point.”

Lucia seemed to consider this for several minutes but said nothing.  She hadn’t brought it up even as we returned to the Lucky 38.  At the suite, we left the elevator and she didn’t, continuing to the Penthouse, presumably to ask Yes Man about the reactor.  

I followed Max, thinking he was headed for the couch, but he turned into the bathroom so I went to check on Cass.  Cass was gone and so was Veronica, I found the suite empty aside from us.  Someone had put the cushion back on the couch and dried it off.  I got my book from the kitchen and sat at the other end of the sofa, figuring that Max would return to the couch where he usually slept once he reemerged.  I’d only just opened it when I remembered Lily and what I’d been wanting to ask Max about her.  

*       *       *

I found Arcade reading by the couch nearly two hours later when I reemerged.  I couldn’t drink vodka right now, he’d been correct.  If I drank vodka I’d bleed more badly.  I seemed to have clotted again, but exhaustion gnawed at me worse than it usually did, and my bruised and torn insides felt dead inside me, though I knew they weren’t.  I needed rest and hopefully the courier wouldn’t wake me for sex.  Even if she tried, she might not succeed and it might not matter if she wanted to kill me for that.  I couldn’t bring myself to care that she had done this to me; she’d only done some of it.  

I eased myself onto the couch, tugging the blanket until it spread over top of me and lying down as if my body was filled with glass.  That wasn’t far from how it felt.  I could have fallen asleep right then except for a lingering anxiety just strong enough to keep me conscious.  Maybe I did fear death.  I didn’t fear pain, but I hated it, and for years I’d just wanted it to end, but I don’t think I wanted death, not really.  I just wanted not to hurt anymore.  Maybe that was why right now I felt so afraid to shut my eyes.  I didn’t know if I’d ever wake up again.  It didn’t matter where I slept because I never fell asleep easily and I was always tired; no one ever knew for sure that they’d wake in the morning, but with no idea why I’d always felt this ill, I always hoped and worried that this night, it would end.  

Paralyzed with this thought, I studied Arcade as he read.  “Were you really going to shoot me?”

He looked up, marked his page with a card and shut the book.  He must have been planning to stop reading and talk to me; I’d just preempted him.  My question made him pause.  I didn’t except him to answer directly, but after a long, somber moment, he admitted, “Yes.”

I tried to process some reaction to that admission but couldn’t decide between relief and regret before he changed the subject.  

“You’re making Lily’s medicine, aren’t you?”

“I am.”  I couldn’t read the title of his book from this angle and groggy as I was, I just studied his features.  He had lovely eyes.  I’d never really noticed that, even when I’d seen them up close.  

He asked a bunch of questions about the formula I used for Lily’s medicine and I answered softly, apparently leaving him puzzled.  “Why?”

Arcade folded his hands and rested his chin on his knuckles.  “Because she seems more disoriented lately.  But as far as I can tell, you’re making her medicine correctly.”

“She’s taking less of it.”  Arcade frowned at me and I clarified as best as I could remember from what Lily and the courier had told me, “She can’t remember her grandkids when she takes full or even half doses.  Lucia had me reduce the dosage even further.”  I avoided the supermutant whenever possible because apparently I strongly resembled her grandson and she tended to hug me, which agonized my already aching insides.  The constant offers of cookies I refused to eat didn’t help.  

*       *       *

He’d reduced the dose even further?  I tried not to think of the other day when Lily had tried to attack me, but even so, that was incredibly dangerous.  “Max,” I insisted, “even if it lets her remember her past, it might not be worth the damage she could do…”

“I know.”

Not for the first time, I wanted to shake him.  “But you don’t care?  How can you just sit by and… and…?!  You’re brilliant, maybe a better chemist than I am and certainly better with machines; you’ve figured out that this place has a deactivated reactor, you might have heard of a spy in the NCR, you uncovered a plot to massacre civilians, and you aren’t willing to do anything about any of that?!  You could at least make sure that Lily takes—”

“It’s not my decision.”

“If you’re making her medicine, if Doc Henry hasn’t said anything, that makes you the closest thing she has to a doctor, it’s your obligation to—”

“Doc Henry was treating her?”

“Yes.  …do you know him?”

“I’ve heard of him,” Max admitted.  He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling because he had to turn his head too far to look at me. “Do _you_ know him?”  

“Uh, no.  I…um…”  I trailed off, realizing that he didn’t seem to care.  Either he knew I was lying or he had never really been interested in the answer.  He looked distracted.  A thoughtful frown had creased his brow like storm clouds over the tundra of his bleak stare.  He had his hands folded on his chest and in the suit, with his shining hair still perfectly styled and his face lined and pale he struck an eerily funereal figure and I shuddered.  

I’d wondered since he’d first walked into the kitchen in that suit if he expected or even planned to die today and I hadn’t wanted to ask, but now I couldn’t risk staying silent in case it might be true.  “Max, …why are you wearing that suit?”

He snorted.  “You saw my shorts.”

“That’s not what I meant.”  He kept staring forward, so I added, “You didn’t need the jacket if you were just after a change of clothes.”  

“I like the jacket.”  He sat up, hauling himself upright with his arms rather than using his abs.  He stood shakily and took off the jacket and cuff-links, folding the former and setting them neatly on a desk in the corner.  He hesitated, but took off his shirt as well, folding it just as carefully and setting it beside them.  I worried vaguely that he might strip, but that fear seemed irrelevant compared to the topic at hand.  I followed him as he walked to the furthest bed and sat down.  I sat on the bed beside his, partly so we could talk facing each other, but I’d been planning to lie down and read even if this conversation hadn’t happened.  Max rested his head on his hand and stared at me.  “Why do you care so much?”

“I’m just worried about you,” I admitted without really answering the question, “I don’t want you to do anything stupid.”  

Max scowled.  “Stupid is relative.  And easy to judge when you don’t know the full story.”

“Enlighten me.”

He glared and lay down facing the wall.  For a long moment he didn’t move so I took off my boots and lay down to read.  I thought he had fallen asleep, but he hadn’t.  

Max slid off the other bed and crawled into mine, slipping under the blankets and snuggling against me.  He curled his spine either in pain or to avoid the book I was reading as I rolled onto my side to face him.  I replaced the card I used as a bookmark and set the book on the table between the beds.  “Max?”

He had his eyes closed and I couldn’t tell if he was really crying or in so much pain that his eyes watered.  He spoke so softly that I barely heard the agony in his voice.  “I’m not going to do anything tonight.”

Forever ambiguous, I had no idea if he meant he wasn’t trying to seduce me or if he meant he didn’t plan to kill himself tonight.  I didn’t miss that he specified tonight; whichever it was, tomorrow might be the day.  I didn’t ask which, I just kissed his forehead.  

A pair of hazel eyes opened and looked at me and he clarified what I’d been wondering, “I don’t want to _die_.  I haven’t been serious about it yet and today didn’t change that.”  

“Max—”

“Don’t.”  His eyes were still wet, but tears had stopped dripping across the bridge of his nose and off his right cheek.  He managed some semblance of determination that I hadn’t expected him to have.  “You understand a lot about me and I’m being honest with you.  I’ve _been_ honest with you.  I’m trusting you with this, but I don’t want everyone to know and I’m only admitting it because I know you’d never let this go if I didn’t.  I am in pain almost constantly.  I’m sick _all_ the time.  I’m resistant, allergic, or immune to _everything_ I’ve tried to fix this, except vodka, which barely helps at all.  I don’t want to live like this.  I just…”  He sighed and continued without giving me time to put my horror and sympathy into words.  “I’m sorry for… I’m sorry I tried to use you to end this.  I won’t do that again.  I won’t end it tonight.  I want you to know that so you don’t worry right now.”  

He snuggled against me even closer and I could feel how cold he was.  I rested my hand on his back and felt the skin like a marble statue beneath my palm.  I pulled the blankets up to his neck and hugged him in an effort to keep him warm.  Everything he’d said unnerved me.  I no longer worried he might just be lying; he had no reason to lie and couldn’t fake these symptoms.  It bothered me more that he’d said he had yet to really try.  The man was a brilliant biochemist; if he wanted to kill himself he could synthesize any of dozens of chemicals to end his life surely and quickly.  

“Max,” I heard my voice break, “what _is_ this?  What disease do you have?  I can ask the Followers—”

“The Followers don’t know.  I already asked them.”

I frowned, mentally cursing whatever overworked, careless doctor he’d seen.  “Who did you ask?”

“Usanagi.”

I lapsed into silence.  Usanagi was the best doctor I knew of, aside from Henry.  And Henry seemed unlikely to bother with even an ex-Enclave dying prostitute, assuming I could get Max up to him without the man dying on the way.  He was so cold even now, he must still be bleeding.  I looked down and noticed his eyes were closed.  

“Max?”

Max mumbled something that didn’t sound coherent.  

He needed a coagulant or a stimpak, probably both.  I got up to get them but tried to keep him talking.  “Max, I think you’re still bleeding, I’m getting you medicine to promote clotting.”

Rousing himself with obvious effort, Max tried to sit up and settled for lifting his head.  “ _Not_ clotting.  Stimpak.  Cardio…”  He passed out completely.  I had a stimpak strapped to his leg in under a minute but obeyed his warning.  I didn’t expect the man to try and kill himself by internal bleeding; this had to be his disease, in which case his cry of “cardio” had probably been cardiomyopathy which meant a drug to promote blood clotting would likely induce a heart attack.  And if he had heart problems, that could explain the bleeding as well as clotting, so clotting agents could cause just as many problems as anticoagulants.  But Usanagi would have recognized a heart problem, even a heart defect, especially with that autodoc of hers.  This had to be something else, something she wouldn’t have expected or noticed.  If he’d tried to treat himself for this, medication or even the disease itself could have damaged his heart and caused the bleeding and the clotting.  And heart problems didn’t necessarily explain pain, which suggested something neurological and that was bad.  Nerve and brain problems were often incurable.  He might be right.  It really might be more merciful to kill him, but I wasn’t going to accept that just yet.  

I switched my bookmark to an encyclopedia of neurology to research more likely possibilities and lay beside him as I read so my body heat might keep him from getting too cold.  Max woke up sometime late that night.  He scooted a little closer to me and stretched his left arm across my chest.  I set the book down and propped myself up to look at him.  

Max stared up at me.  “Thanks.”

I tilted my head.  “I didn’t really expect you to thank me, given what we’d just talked about.”

“I’m not quite to the point of slitting my wrists after I take twenty milligrams of coumarin.  Tonight.”  Now I felt as cold as he was.  That was his plan?  That much of an anticoagulant that powerful would probably bleed him out internally, let alone if he opened a major blood vessel.  

“You don’t have to.”  Max scowled and I pleaded with him, “Give me a chance.  I _am_ a doctor, maybe Usanagi missed something, maybe there’s something she didn’t think of.  You said yourself that you don’t want to die.”

“I don’t,” he admitted again and rolled onto his back, wincing as gravity shifted his insides.  He frowned for a long moment and then sighed.  “I won’t stop you, but I doubt it will work.  And I can’t guarantee that I won’t overcome my own fear of death in that time.”

“…Have a little faith in me?”

He gave me a very sad smile.  “I can’t because I know you’d try even if there was no hope.”

I couldn’t pretend that wasn’t true.  I hugged him, willing whatever he had to be treatable.  I don’t think he realized I could hear him when he whispered, “I still don’t understand why you care so much.”

 


	8. Last Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might be a lot more writing all of a sudden. I kinda need to write right now. >_>

Max fell asleep right then and I’d only planned to keep him warm and read, but at some point I dozed off as well.  I always slept lightly.  Back at the Old Mormon Fort, I’d wake up every time a patient rolled over, even in the tent next door.  So I was particularly amazed when I woke and he’d already left the room.  I’d slept better and more deeply than I had in almost a year, I woke up alone, but energized and more hopeful than I’d felt in months.  Unless the courier needed me for something, I’d spend today pouring through medical texts and with any luck I _would_ figure out what was killing Max.  Nobody else was going to die on my watch.  

I heard breakfast or maybe lunch underway in the kitchen and headed over there.  Cass and Veronica had started a poker game with Max while they ate.  Max, of course, had no food, today he didn’t even have his usual vodka.  I felt a little bad for that now that I knew the full story; if it kept him from killing himself, I’d let him drink.  

Max had that confident smirk he always wore, but he leaned forward in his seat and despite the white dress shirt he was wearing, I could see a tension to his back that suggested pain.  Cass and Veronica seemed oblivious to this, but I was looking for it.  If he hadn’t told me he was always in pain, or even if I just hadn’t expected him to be hurting right now, I’d never have suspected.  

That’s probably why he had almost all the chips in front of him right now.  

“I raise.”  Max placed another chip on the pile between them and folded his arms on the table.  Cass and Veronica frowned at him suspiciously.  

I rummaged in the cabinets while Cass scowled.  “No way you’re bluffing me out of another win.”  

She placed chips on the table but hadn’t quite let go when Max chuckled and mused, “I’ve been bluffing this whole game, how do you know this isn’t my first decent hand today?”

Cass hesitated and she and Veronica exchanged a glance.  “Hey, Vero, is his luck usually bad?”

Veronica shrugged.  Cass narrowed her eyes at Max, whose cocky smile never faltered.  “I think yer’ shittin’ me.”  She placed the chips on the table and withdrew her hand.  

Veronica considered just as carefully and folded.  Max raised once more as I walked over with my breakfast and one of his bottles of vodka.  I handed him the vodka and sat down beside him, drawing the girl’s attention for the first time.  

“Arcade!” Cass laughed, “Did Max wear you out last night?”

Evidently, they hadn’t noticed I was in the room until now, but they’d seen us sharing a bed at some point before Max woke up.  Max frowned thoughtfully and looked to see my reaction.  Presumably, if I wanted to pretend we’d had sex to disguise what had actually happened, he’d play along, but I just planned to be vague.  I focused on my breakfast.  “Uh, no.”

Veronica was less crude, but just as curious.  She set her cards down and tilted her head at me.  “I mean, you did share a bed.  Are you two okay with each other now?”

“Yes.”  I glanced at Max and found him staring back, apparently leaving all talking up to me, despite the fact that he clearly had more skill lying.  

“So… that’s how you made up?” Cass asked, puzzled, “You cuddled?”

Max opened his vodka and took a long gulp, preempting any chance I had to convince him to answer this one.  “Well, cuddling wasn’t exactly the objective.”

Max choked on his vodka and I realized how that sounded after I spoke.  Veronica’s eyes widened.  “Oh.  Okay, then.”

Cass cackled maniacally.  “Damn!  No need to be shy about it!  Though if ya ever want a threesome…”

Regaining the ability to breathe, although his voice had suddenly become as raspy and gravelly as his rugged face suggested, Max rebuked her.  “No.  Cass, I’m really not interested.”

I studied his perfect pokerface.  _Was_ he gay?  He certainly never came on to anyone but me, but no one else had been so bothered by his advances.  The only other person he seemed interested in was Lucia.  He’d slept with her, hadn’t he?  I’d heard them— only a little, but it was clear enough that they must have done it.  Either that, or they had reason to fake it.  I could see them doing that to mess with me or maybe to get me interested, if this was Max’s idea, but I got the sense that he understood me too well to bother.  

Max met my gaze with a curious frown.  Enigmatic as always, I couldn’t guess what he was thinking and he said nothing before turning back to the table and gesturing at the cards, “Well, I believe I was in the process of winning this game?”

Cass noticed that he’d raised and scrunched up her face, scrutinizing him.  “You’ve gotta be bluffing…”  She didn’t sound too sure about that.  With Max sitting beside me, I leaned over to see his hand.  

I raised my eyebrows.  “Oh, Veronica definitely has the right idea about this hand.”

Cass turned her gaze to me.  “Yer telling us what he has?”

“I’m just making a suggestion.  I’d never tell you he has, say, a royal flush…”

Cass looked to Veronica in shock while the engineer glanced between Max and myself, thinking carefully.  “Vero, would he do that?”  Apparently, Cass didn’t know me that well and thought Veronica did.  They were both wrong.  And Max, for his part, maintained that perfect smirk, never giving away even a hint of the truth.  

Veronica shrugged.  After a long and very pained staring match, Cass swore.  “Fine.  I fold.”

Max lay down a pair of fours and chuckled.  “Ladies, never gamble with a prostitute.  We’re almost as skilled at acting as we are at reading people.  Or at least we are if we’re any good at our jobs.”  

Veronica scowled as he hauled in the chips and started sorting them into the growing piles in front of him.  “Max, that’s hardly a dignified—”

Cass interrupted her, flinging a cracker across the table at me.  The cracker missed, falling short and bouncing off my glass of water.  “That was a dirty trick.”

“You aren’t playing for caps, are you?”  

She ignored my point, chucking another cracker my way.  I ducked and it hit the wall.  “Still a damn dirty lie.”  She was drunk.  I hadn’t expected that quite this early in the morning.  

Veronica took the box of crackers before it could provide more ammo and Max tried to intervene, but he was laughing too hard for her to listen.  “Cass, it’s just a game.  Relax.  I would have won anyway.”

Relieved of her crackers, Cass grabbed the next best thing: a snack cake and lobbed it at him.  The pastry projectile struck him full in the face and his reflex to catch it left him awkwardly juggling the iced loaf for a moment before he could grip it properly and fling it back at her.  

It hit Cass in the head and left a trace of icing in her hair.  She narrowed her eyes.  “Oh, _now_ you’re gonna get it!”

Cass grabbed another snack cake and flung it at Max, missing his face but managing to slip inside the unbuttoned collar of his shirt.  Max scrambled to shed his shirt as if the pastry burned him— although it certainly must have been uncomfortable— and that gave Cass the opportunity to seek more ammo.  The courier grabbed her shoulders to stop her.  

None of us had heard Lucia arrive and no one had noticed her until now.  “Guys,” Lucia pleaded, “ _please_ try not to make the carpet any more filthy than it already is.”  She looked from Cass to Max and sighed.  “Who started this?”

Max stood beside me so when Cass, standing further down the table pointed in our direction I wasn’t sure who she was blaming.  Max, predictably, nodded towards her, “She’s the one who started throwing things.”  Holding the snack cake in one hand, he took off his shirt and folded it over one arm.  I’m pretty sure he posed to make his musculature stand out, although he didn’t make that obvious.  

Lucia’s eyes danced over his figure and she sighed.  “Fine, just try to behave yourselves.”  She waved Cass over.  “Take ED-E and bring Raul back here, you know where his shack is, right?  I need his help for something.”  After what Max had mentioned yesterday and the fact that Lucia had been gone until now, I figured she must have found the reactor and wanted him to repair it.  Lucia retreated to her room when Cass nodded and the caravaner left with ED-E, presumably to do as she’d been told.  She paused only long enough to grab the snack cake out of Max’s hand and shove it into her mouth.  

He chuckled, jokingly seductive, “Enjoy?”

Cass nodded appreciatively, her mouth too full to reply.  

Once the elevator closed, I went back to eating my breakfast.  Max set about washing his shirt in the sink, ignoring the icing still on his arms and chest.  Veronica watched him, glanced at me, and addressed Max.  “G-Max…  Are you…?”  She trailed off when he left his shirt soaking in the sink and dug something out of a box beside the work bench.  I hadn’t realized any of that stuff was actually his; I mean, it made perfect sense, I’d just always presumed it all belonged to Lucia.  He kept his body between us and the workbench, so I couldn’t see anything he did until he set a large dish on the hot plate at a low temperature  He seemed to do a lot before that point and I wondered what he was making.  

“Am I what?”

Veronica didn’t pay attention to Max’s hands, although she could probably see more than I could.  “Are you okay?  I know there’s… the usual, probably, and you hinted at some other stuff, but you’re alright, aren’t you?”  It was obvious she wanted to ask him more, or at least go into more detail.  It felt surreal to be on the opposite side of this situation, for once.  

“I’m fine, Vero, you’re just worrying too much.”  Max answered without turning around.  He faked a laugh, but it didn’t fool either of us.  

Vero and I both narrowed our eyes.  They seemed to be related.  Even if they might not be, they clearly knew each other and if he was going to die, or kill himself, I would have appreciated if she at least knew _something_ was wrong.  I wasn’t going to tell her, that was his choice, but Veronica knew him well enough to call him out.  “Max,” she quietly insisted, “you need to tell me if there’s a problem.  We can help.  Even if _I_ can’t, there’s Lucia, and Arcade’s a doctor…”  She looked at me as she mentioned my name and must have realized that I knew.  “Arcade, what isn’t he saying?”

I glanced at Max, finding that he’d gone back to whatever he was doing at the workbench.  I wished he could feel my disapproval and he probably knew I didn’t like his refusal to tell her, but I still tried to cover for him.  “I’m not really sure.  I just, uh, picked up some clues.  It’s not really enough to go on, probably just the same sort of hints he’s dropped to you…”

She turned to face me and settled her hands on the table very seriously.  “Arcade…”

I glanced at Max again, not sure how to deflect when she _knew_ I knew more than I’d told her and Veronica must have realized I wasn’t going to be honest.  Looking at Max, she judged that he wouldn’t tell her either.  Veronica let out an exasperated sigh and stormed out of the room.  “ _Men!_ ”

Max hadn’t turned around and he still didn’t as I got up, even when he spoke.  “Thanks.”

“I’d appreciate if you told her.  Especially if this… goes badly.”

He snorted.  “It’s already going badly.”  He let his smile fade, again, and looked only marginally more healthy than he had yesterday.  “Veronica…  Vero and I grew up together.  She’s like my… my older sister, I guess, but we’re cousins and I’ve always felt like the older one.  When we were little and even now, to some degree, she holds me to this absurd standard like I’m something more than human and every mistake is just…  I… that’s part of why I left.  I’ve been living my own life and people don’t care if I screw up because most of them have screwed up a hundred times worse, and now I’m back around Veronica and it’s just…  When we were kids, I always pretended everything was fine even when it wasn’t and she seemed to think that I could handle anything that happened because that’s what she saw.  I got really good at hiding it really fast and she never really knew I wasn’t that strong or brave or emotionally stable.  I’d rather she hold on to the person she thought she knew than find out exactly how broken I’ve been all my life.”

“`All your life’?”  Finding out about his childhood and renewing my speculation about his possible Enclave ties— and Veronica’s for that matter— took a back seat to the discovery that whatever he had had been going on that long.  Assuming he didn’t just mean childhood problems or the constant fear that came with having family in the Enclave.  

Max confirmed my suspicion as he continued concocting some mystery substance I still couldn’t see.  He nodded.  “I’ve had this all my life, at least as long as I can remember.  It’s been worse sometimes and sometimes it was better.  Right now, I’ve learned enough that I can make it so this doesn’t completely cripple me, but I can’t cure the pain.”  

“So this used to be worse?”  That seemed absurd.  He was already at the point of suicide, but then again, he’d attempted the same in the past.  If he’d had this all his life, maybe he’d just reached the point where he lost hope of a cure.  

Max nodded.  I stepped closer so I could see him as we talked.  He had that cold blank stare again.  I’d figured that he’d been synthesizing Lilly’s medicine, but when I could see the workbench in front of him, I saw a massive syringe filled with something much darker.  Even as a solution, Lilly’s medicine would be nearly clear; I had no idea what this was, but my first thought was poorly refined coumarin or something just as deadly and I barely realized what he was doing before Max turned the needle towards his arm.  

“Max!”

I dove for the needle and he scrambled backwards to keep it.  I could tell he was in pain now more than ever; only a vestige of his usual grace remained and even to finish what I took as an attempt to end his life, he moved as if every step drove nails into his gut.  Or lack thereof.  Pain made him tense and that tension accentuated the already very visible muscles of his abdomen.  I couldn’t help but notice this because, after a very short scuffle, I had Max pinned on the table.  It was a one-sided fight— he was too in pain to put up much resistance— but it left us both in an awkward position.  I’d used my height as leverage to pin him, which left me holding his wrists against the table above his head.   He still had the needle but couldn’t inject himself while I held his arms, so he’d relaxed.  He’d tried to use the table as an obstacle but hadn’t been quick enough, so he just lay mostly on top of it with his ass at the very edge, one leg dangling off the table and the other draped over a chair beside me.  On my left.  And his limp leg rested against my right thigh.  And keeping him pinned left me leaning over the table.  

I blushed when I realized that and Max noticed it a few seconds after I did.  His sly grin returned.  He struggled to lean towards me and I braced my arms against his wrists to keep him at bay, fully expecting his usual tactic of trying to distract me.  Thwarted, Max instead shoved himself towards the edge of the table, pressing his rear against my crotch.  

Veronica must have heard our scuffle or my yell when I first tried to stop him.  She stepped into the kitchen, “Is everything o…?”  

The chairs hid the needle and most of Max from her view, so she had a very different idea of what she’d walked in on.  I saw her blush probably about as brightly as I was blushing right now.  Brilliant, Max’s attempts to keep his many destructive secrets had led to yet another awkward misunderstanding.  Veronica backed towards the hallway as I opened my mouth to explain.  “Sorry, you don’t need to say anything, just at least close the door…”  She shut the door as she left and I scowled at Max.  

“I really don’t need everyone thinking that we’re sleeping together, even if it is an improvement over having them think that I want to kill you.”  I stepped as far back from the table as I could manage while still keeping him pinned, wagering that I’d rather lean a little closer to him than leave his hips grinding into me like that.  At least kissing was less likely to… well, to validate those rumors.  Max knew how to seduce anyone, I wouldn’t be surprised if he could have gotten even Boone to sleep with him given enough alcohol and time.  I didn’t _want_ to start something with him.  However hot he was, however much his intelligence and charm might attract me, however much I wanted someone who knew my past, Max was trouble.  It wasn’t just that he could probably get me to do anything he wanted, it was also that he was sick, probably dying, and had more emotional turmoil than the entirety of Freeside combined.  And I just had to keep reminding myself of that until it really seemed like a valid argument.  

As if he could read my mind, Max cocked his head confidently and asked, “Why don’t you want them thinking we’re sleeping together?”

“Because we’re not.”  If he wanted to distract me from the needle in his hand, it wasn’t going to work…

“Then let’s change that.”  Max lunged forward and kissed me, forcing his tongue between my lips but stopping even before I shifted my grip to keep his fingers around the needle and release his other arm so I could shove his face away from mine.  Max let his head thump back onto the table, groaning in pain because he’d misjudged the force of the impact.  “That didn’t work as well as I’d expected.”

He hadn’t moved the arm I’d let go, but rather than risk him grabbing the needle, I pinned it again.  This time I held his hand rather then his wrist, mostly because I felt bad that I might have pushed him away too forcefully.  He interlocked his fingers with mine.  I knew he used some form of moisturizer, probably something he made himself and probably something that he also used as lube; it left his skin distinctly soft and smooth, especially his hands.  Except his palm wasn’t smooth right now.  I shifted my grip to see what I was feeling.  Max had a rash of tiny reddish bumps along his palm and some of his fingers.  I hadn’t seen it yesterday or even just a few minutes ago.  The polymer concealing his implanted zap glove, which normally blended indiscernibly with his skin now stood out as a conspicuously smooth patch.  I lifted the edge of it and found normal skin beneath.  

Max grimaced.  “You have no idea how much that itches.  I’d really appreciate if you let me go.”

I barely heard him.  “Are you allergic to something?”

He sighed and squirmed, failing to even adjust my grip.  “I don’t know, I’m allergic to everything.  You think this rash is some kind of allergy?”

“It might be.”  I hadn’t wanted to ask him outright, but we were alone, and his heritage might be very relevant.  “It might also tell me what’s making you sick.  You grew up in a… an isolationist community, didn’t you?”  

Max’s smile vanished in an instant.  He looked very serious.  Once again, I caught a glimpse of the man he might have been.  He eyed me suspiciously, taking several minutes to choose his words before he replied.  “You mean genetically?  Yes.  We… did not intermarry with wastelanders.”  I took that statement as confirmation that he had Enclave ties.  I still don’t know if I felt more overjoyed about that or the fact that Old World genetics could be the cause of his illness, in which case I could treat it.  I beamed at him and Max raised an eyebrow.  

“I guess I could see how you might appreciate that news more than most, but I wasn’t expecting this level of joy.  It’s not something I like to admit.”

I managed to stop grinning idiotically but couldn’t contain a relieved laugh.  “No, it’s not that… or not _just_ that.  If you have what I think you have, it’s treatable, sort of, but bleeding isn’t a symptom—”

He cut me off with his own, more humorless laugh, “Sort of treatable isn’t too comforting, but it _is_ better than untreatable.  And the bleeding isn’t a symptom, at least I never thought that it was; my bleeding has… er… _other_ causes, and I haven’t even had a nosebleed in my entire life.”  

“Really?”  Considering the climate and his allergies, as well as the bleeding I now thought must have been connected to his alcoholism, that seemed unlikely, but he was getting me distracted.  “Do you know if anyone else in your family was sick?  Their symptoms might have been more mild—”

“My mother was also very sick, but it may not be the same thing.  She died.  Her symptoms didn’t start until… until things happened.  What she had seemed to be triggered by stress, but I’ve had this since birth.”

“How did she die?”  I asked because I hoped it might support my diagnosis and I quickly regretted the question.  

Max sighed and focused his gaze blankly on the ceiling.  “Gunshot.”  

He’d been there.  He’d seen it happen.  He must have.  He got that hollow look and I held his arms tighter lest he go for the needle again.  “Max—”

I’d wanted to console him but he scoffed, realizing what had me so frightened for him right now.  “You think this is poison, don’t you?”  He waved the needle between two fingers, holding it like a pen.  He didn’t wait for my answer, he knew he was right.  “It’s not.  If I’d planned to kill myself, I’m certainly not dumb enough to do it in front of you.  I’d wait until you left or fell asleep.”  

It terrified me that he could be so brutally honest about his intentions.  I tried to change the subject but didn’t ease my hold on his arms in case he had lied.  “Then what is that?”

Max avoided my gaze.  For a long time he hesitated, clearly reluctant to admit the truth.  He paused so long that a chill settled in my gut telling me that it really _was_ poison and he had planned to commit suicide right in front of me.  He’d already tried to provoke me into murder; either he’d hoped I would stop him both times or he truly wanted an audience for his death.  Some people did.  Some people felt that they needed a witness so their death would leave some impact on the world, grisly as it was.  

He proved me wrong.  “It’s a nutrient formula,” Max admitted.  “I’ve been synthesizing it for myself for the past few years.  You were right when you asked earlier.  I don’t eat.  The pain’s worse if I eat anything, and I’ve studied enough about nutrition that I can just inject what I need to stay alive.”  I’m not sure I would have believed or trusted him if what he’d just said hadn’t fit my theory so perfectly.  

“Max, I think I know what you have, are you willing to try something to find out if I’m right?”

“Exactly what odds are we talking here and what do you want to try?  Is this still the somewhat treatable hereditary disease or did I prove you wrong?”  He was cynical and I didn’t blame him.  If he’d been to Usanagi after growing up with Enclave resources, he must have already asked dozens of doctors; he’d only turned to suicide once he believed he could never be diagnosed, let alone cured.  He’d probably undergone dozens of treatments that never worked, or never worked for long.  He didn’t trust me, but he couldn’t trust anyone.  After what he’d been through he’d come to assume any attempt would always fail, and he’d continue to believe that unless I proved him wrong.  I didn’t feel offended that he didn’t trust me, I wasn’t sure I really expected to be right either and even if I’d been willing to stake my life on this, I wouldn’t have been angry.  I was just sad that he’d given up hope for anything but death.  

“There isn’t a cure,” I admitted and watched his already dour expression return to the hollow stare he didn’t seem willing to let anyone else see, “but there’s a way to make the pain stop, if I’m right.  I think you have a hereditary autoimmune disease that causes your body to react adversely to a compound in most grains.  Basically, your body attacks itself.  If you’re willing to stop drinking anything but water for a few days, your digestive tract should start to heal.  After that, you can start eating as long as you don’t eat anything containing that compound.  Your body won’t be used to it, so you’ll have to start slow, with rice or apples, or something—”

Max didn’t move, or even look away from the ceiling.  “How sure are you that this is what I have?”

I grimaced.  “I’m not.”  Really, the only reason I suspected celiac disease was because it was genetic.  Almost anyone in the wasteland with a genetic condition like this would have died long ago.  The only places where such individuals survived— let alone reproduced— were technologically advanced isolationist communities like the Enclave and maybe the Brotherhood of Steel.  The average wasteland doctor, or even Usanagi, would never consider genetic conditions unless he admitted his history, and I doubted that he ever would have.  In his situation, I don’t think I would have either.  

Max crossed his arms and jabbed the needle into his vein, but this time I didn’t stop him.  He looked thoughtful, so I hoped he was considering what I’d said, but I really wasn’t sure if I had the heart to force him to keep living if I was wrong.  “I can’t say I have much choice but to try that,” Max admitted, “I mean, a slim chance to even reduce the pain is better than death, I guess.”

He was joking, I think, or at least I hope he was joking.  “Yes, death or a less painful life, what a difficult choice.”  

He narrowed his eyes and paused to inject the serum.  He did so slowly, which was a good sign.  Injecting that much of almost anything risked stopping his heart if he did it too quickly; I don’t think he would have bothered slowing down if it had been poison.  

“Sorry.”  Max looked away from the ceiling and lifted his head when he realized I’d walked over to the sink to get him a glass of water.  “I know you’re trying to help and it’s nothing personal, I’ve just… I’ve learned not to get my hopes up.  Almost eighteen years of—”

“I understand.”  

Max fell silent.  He took the water I offered him and risked one very hesitant sip.  “Thanks.”  I didn’t know if he meant for the water or for being so understanding; I found out when he clarified.  “Some doctors get insulted when I act like their treatment won’t work.”  

“Some doctors are better at what they do,” I grumbled before I could stop myself.  

Max sat up completely.  “You’re a good doctor.”

I scoffed as I sat back down where I’d been sitting before.  My cereal had gotten very soggy.  It was rice cereal— luckily, I suppose— or Max might have really regretted that kiss.  Assuming I was even right about this.  “I’m a _decent_ doctor.  There are better.”

He narrowed his eyes and rolled to face me, still lying rather seductively on the table.  “Arcade, you work with the Followers, you’d be hard pressed to find better doctors except in—”  He stopped himself and stared at the glass of water.  “…in other places.”  He sipped the water so hesitantly that the level didn’t seem to move, but he spoke again before I could comment.  “You’re a great doctor, Arcade.  If you’re right, I’d say you’re the best doctor in the world.”

I snorted into my own water.  “I just know… I know relevant things about you.”

He laughed, one of the first genuine laughs I’d heard from him.  His laugh was bittersweet even when it had no reason to be.  Or at least no reason aside from his pain.  “I’ve been more open with you than with most.  I trust that you’ll keep those secrets.”

We both drank, in his case he was probably just thirsty but I sipped my water to pass the time while I debated how to ask what I wanted to ask.  I had to know if I had some tell or if something I’d said had given me away.  “How did you know?”

Max frowned in confusion.  “Know what?”  His side had stuck to the table, so he’d noticed the icing that practically coated his front.  I tried not to think about it especially because the sweet translucent substance strongly resembled something Max was probably much more used to being covered in.  And less likely to be allergic to.  Max trailed his fingers through the mess without breaking eye contact.  

“Can you stop that?”  He must have realized what I’d been asking and he didn’t want to answer, which was why he’d started doing this.  

Ignoring my scowl, Max slid one finger up through the icing to rub his nipple and grin seductively.  “Why?  I mean, I’m already sticky… and Vero already thinks—”

“ _Everyone_ already thinks we’re sleeping together—”

“We are,” Max laughed, “and why—”

“Metaphorically, not literally—”

“ _Why_ not both?”

I stared at him, careful not to look below his neck.  Was he serious?  He probably was.  “Aren’t you already sleeping with Lucia?”

He scoffed, propping himself up a bit further and letting his stickier hand rest against his thigh.  “That shouldn’t matter.”

For the first time in days, he really made me angry.  “Max, I’m not letting you just _use_ her like that!  Granted, you hardly have a normal understanding of sex, but try to have some human decency!  She’s innocent!  She…  What the hell is so funny about this?”

He’d flopped onto his back, he was laughing so hard.  It took a few minutes until he calmed down enough to answer.  “You really don’t know her at all.”

I sighed.  I wanted to believe that he was wrong, but so far he seemed like a better judge of character than I was— I’d always been terrible at reading people and that often got me in trouble.  Maybe he was right.  Maybe Lucia really didn’t care who he slept with.  But she seemed so naive and sentimental…  

Max rolled onto his side, returning quite fully to the suave audacity he’d had just a few moments ago.  He upped the ante again.  One long, perfectly muscled leg slid up, tracing a line along his inner thigh with the tip of his toe and rising to extend until his calf grazed his shoulder and his ankle stretched above his head.  He continued the display in the same captivatingly graceful motions as he spoke.  He must be double jointed or _something_ …  

“Everyone already thinks we’re sleeping together, which means she does too.  Lucia doesn’t care about this, and I can see you’re interested.  So what will it take?  I’ve had Cass get my things from the Gomorra, which she was more than happy to do.  I’ve got dozens of outfits: sexy businessman, sexy raider— although, to be fair, that’s just normal raider gear—, sexy cowboy, sexy legionary, sexy doctor, …sexy Brotherhood of Steel paladin?”

“Wait, what?”  That last one snapped me out of my daze.  He’d had me picturing each costume he mentioned— even the legionary: fascist slave empire aside, they did tend to be pretty hot and he wasn’t _actually_ one of them— but paladin?  “I doubt even you can make power armor look sexy.”

He chuckled.  “It’s not a full suit.  I’ve got a helmet… and the pauldrons attached to a leather harness… and the boots.  I slip some of the arm casings over my bracers.  It’s more popular than you might think, and even normal power armor does have _some_ fans…”  He leaned forward, trying to kiss me and failed as I pushed my chair back.  

“All those outfits and you don’t have `sexy NCR trooper’?”  I expected him to assume I’d be interested in that or quip that it would be easy to make such a costume, but he didn’t.  His grin faded.  

“I don’t do NCR.  Ever.”

“You do raider, legionary, and Brotherhood, but not NCR?”  

“It isn’t personal with them.  If you want `sexy trooper’ you’re out of luck.”  I guess that was good.  It would have been awkward for me if he _had_ done it.  And knowing him, he’d have shown up in costume at the most inopportune times.  

“Didn’t you have clients who were NCR?”

“Yes.”  Max scoffed, “Fucking them is different from pretending to be one of them.”  He added under his breath, “Or agreeing with them.”

I tried to change the subject.  “How did you know I was— …How did you know about my past?”

He blinked at me and then drank some more water and stared into his glass as he replied.  “I know what it’s like to be running from something like that.  I know it hasn’t been all your life because of how much it bothers you.  You remember being safe once, and that makes it worse.  People who’ve always been running never knew safety so they don’t seek it as desperately, some don’t even think that it’s possible.  You still do… and I used to.  I guess I’m safe enough here, but… there’s always something.”  He gestured at the needle he’d left on the table beside him.  He’d probably clean and reuse it for the next time he had to inject himself with something, but that wasn’t the point he was making.  

“Sorry,” I realized aloud, “That’s why you hate the NCR, isn’t it?”  And he’d specified that his mother had died of a gunshot.  The NCR must have shot her in front of him, probably when he was still a child.  That explained why he despised them so much.  

“Yeah.”  I figured he’d leave it at that, but he felt the need to elaborate.  “They’re after me due to… due to an accident of birth.  They killed my mother.  Evidently the NCR thinks allegiance is genetic.”  

“And nothing will ever convince them otherwise.”  I sighed and leaned the chair back against the wall.  “I’ve been dealing with the same problem for most of my life.”

He chuckled.  “I _thought_ you’d understand.”

I returned to my breakfast when he seemed content with the silence.  I’d nearly forgotten the icing on his chest and so had he.  “You might want to shower; if I’m right about what you have, that could give you a nasty rash.”

Max glanced down in surprise.  “Right.”  Rather than tax his sore abdomen, Max rolled sideways off the table and awkwardly clambered to his feet from the floor.  

“That looked painful.”

“Not as bad as sitting up,” Max countered.  He grabbed a towel to wipe the icing off the table and I waved him away.  

“I can do it.”  

“Thanks.”  

Max took over an hour in the shower and by the time he emerged, I’d relocated to the living room. Veronica had gone out sometime while we were talking.  He’d changed into a pair or ridiculously tight leather shorts that looked like part of his raider costume.  Admittedly, his usual shorts had been ruined and the slacks I’d brought him were currently covered in wheat-tainted icing, but still.  “You don’t have any ordinary non-sexy outfits?”

Max chuckled, “Anything’s sexy depending on who you ask.”

“I think those shorts would get a majority vote.”  

“Flatterer.”  He grinned and leaned on the arm of the couch.  “It was these shorts or a leather skirt.  _Without_ underwear.”

“Didn’t you mention a dozen outfits?  Not just Legion or raider?”  

“Yeah, but most of those are ass-less or otherwise more revealing.  I figured this was preferable and I’d rather not have Cass any more interested than usual.”

“Fair point.”  I marked the page of the novel I’d been reading and gestured to the glass of water I’d brought with me from the kitchen.  “That’s yours.  Water will at least help you feel less hungry.”

“Thanks.”  He sat beside me and sipped his water.  I went back to reading when it seemed like he didn’t plan to talk.  

*       *       *

I wasn’t sure what to do right then.  Often, more often lately, I just felt completely disinterested in everything but sex.  I couldn’t really remember if I’d ever enjoyed most of what I did, working with computers, robots, chemicals, reading books, even dancing.  I still enjoyed dancing, to some degree, but more for what usually followed.  That might be my own fault.  Keeping the build I had when I lived off vodka and a nutrient formula wasn’t easy, even with exercise; I dosed myself with small amounts of Buffout, carefully measured for my body weight, but that had a tendency to increase libido.  Although pain did the opposite.  If Arcade was right, maybe my body could go back to some state of normalcy I’d never known.  I wondered if I’d still be this horny.  

The whole thing was probably a pipe dream, as much as I wanted it to work.  I still expected that I’d lose the will to keep trying once this failed, so whether or not it succeeded, this was the last try.  I wasn’t going to let even Arcade dash my hopes a second time.  I was going to be miserable and in pain my entire life, so I’d make it a short one.  

Really, I’d had two reasons for asking him to sleep with me— aside from the fact that he was reasonably cute and I liked sex.  If I slept with him, whether or not it led to anything more meaningful— which it hopefully wouldn’t— that might give me enough solace to keep trying long enough to be sure he’d been wrong.  I also liked him.  Not love, or anything like that, but I considered him a friend, and I had markedly few of those.  Maybe five, counting Veronica, Cass, and Troike, none of whom I’d trusted with anything meaningful.  My fifth friend probably wasn’t my friend at all, but if I had no one else, I’d fall back to him in a last ditch effort at human connection.  He’d probably kill me for disturbing him.  I wanted to make this up to Arcade, to really thank him for even trying to help me, and sex was about the only way I knew of to do that.  He was a better doctor than me and even ED-E raised his hackles, probably because robots risked his cover, so building him one was out of the question.  And he _was_ interested, but he’d still refused.  Why?

Better yet, why had he shown such interest in me in the first place?  And not just sexually; the man went out of his way to keep me alive.  Why?  

“Arcade?”

“Yes?”  He glanced up and set his book down when he noticed how serious I looked.  

“Why are you so determined to help me?  And don’t say you’d do this for anyone because I know it’s more than that.”  

He looked awkward, or at least somewhat more awkward than usual.  “Uh… What makes you think it’s more than that?”

“I understand people and I know you have some other reason for this.”  He didn’t want to answer and for once I accepted that.  I offered an easy explanation, “Is this just because I know your past?”

He nodded.  “Yeah.”  Maybe that was part of the truth.  For once, I didn’t quite understand him.  Maybe he was just glad to have found someone else with a past similar to his own.  Maybe he was just desperate not to lose that.  

 


	9. So Far So Good

Nobody came back until the next morning.  Presumably, we’d scared off Veronica, Lucia must still be sorting out the generator and may have grabbed Raul to help, Lily had vanished, and nobody had seen Boone in weeks.  Max had crawled into my bed sometime during the night and once again that let me sleep more peacefully than usual.  I hadn’t heard anyone arrive, so I headed into the kitchen expecting to find it empty.  I found Cass, drinking whiskey and eating a squirrel kabob.  She sat notably far towards the more distant end of the table and when she noticed me, she waved the kabob towards the dim gleam of the icing I’d forgotten to wipe up.  “I see you two had fun yesterday.”  

I blushed and grabbed a towel to clean it up.  “I suppose there’s nothing I can do to convince you that it _isn’t_ , in fact, what it looks like?”

Her grin widened.  “So things got kinky?”

“Not what I meant.”  

Max didn’t get up.  When I didn’t hear him after five hours, I went to check on him.  He was alive.  He scared me because he didn’t look it.  He lay exactly as I had left him, on his side, arms curled against his chest, clutching the blanket that draped him.  He’d opened his eyes, but hadn’t moved and I found him staring blankly ahead.  I started to run towards him and stopped when his cold gaze flicked towards me.  “Max!  Don’t _do_ that!  I thought—”

I stopped myself.  He didn’t move except to speak and watch me, and he sounded chillingly indifferent.  “What?”

I appreciated the fact that Cass hadn’t followed me.  Max went back to staring at the wall rather than move his head.  I sat beside him on the bed and ran a hand through his hair.  It really was as soft as it looked, even when he’d just woken up and hadn’t bothered to wash it.  The more I thought about it, I wondered why he still tried to keep up appearances, given his state of mind.  I sighed.  I was probably the only one who saw how he really felt because he hid it so well.  “Are you okay?”

“Not really.”  

“Are you feeling sick?”

“No more than usual.”  He didn’t elaborate and I gave him a moment, idly running my fingers through his silky hair.  It had grown out enough that I could just manage to hide my hand beneath the bronze locks.  

When he didn’t seem like he planned to say more, I asked very softly, “Do you think you will get out of bed today?”

“No.”  I stood to leave and he caught my arm.  He let me go before I could turn back towards him and didn’t look up while I waited for an explanation.  

“I can stay here, if you want, just let me get a book.”  Max didn’t move.  “Do you want that?”  He nodded.  The bed was in shadow, but when he moved I realized he was crying.  “Okay.  I’ll be right back.”  

Cass found me lying on the bed reading with Max snuggled against me.  He slept occasionally, but mostly he just lay very still and quiet.  I ignored her and I think by some divine mercy she realized this wasn’t a good time to joke or ask for a threesome.  She drank until she passed out on the couch and for once I didn’t bother to stop her.  

*       *       *

I’m not sure exactly why I broke down that day.  Sometimes it just happened, but that day I had so many thoughts that I might have had cause, for a change.  Mostly, I was afraid.  I had hope, and I hadn’t hoped for a long while, but I didn’t want it.  This wasn’t going to work and I was more afraid of being let down than of death.  And I didn’t want Arcade to blame himself, which he would.  He always would.  Whether I killed myself or died because he was wrong, he was going to blame himself and I saw too much of myself in him not to worry about that.  And he cared about me so much.  Too much.  I had to stop it before he got hurt.  He was so invested in me and he’d already done so much to help me, but I wasn’t worth this.  I was just going to let him down, the way I let down everyone who had faith in me.  Veronica was the only one who hadn’t realized that yet.  

I wondered about this late that night and when I opened my eyes, I found Arcade asleep beside me, his book lying open on his chest.  

*       *       *

I jolted awake some time near morning and realized Max had set the playing card back into my book and placed it on the table behind him.  He must have only just done so because he adjusted his position against me and I realized he looked thoughtful.  

“What?”

“Why do you care about me so much?”

“I answered this earlier.”

“I know.”  He sighed, “Don’t deflect, I gave you an easy answer and even if that’s part of the reason, I know there’s more to it.”  

I stared at the ceiling to avoid his gaze.  He was right.  And I couldn’t really avoid the question.  He’d know if I was lying and he’d know if I tried to deflect and, from the sound of his breathing, he wasn’t just going to fall asleep if I waited.  “I like you,” I admitted.  “Probably more than I should.”

Max propped himself up on his elbows and frowned at me.  “Why?”  He sounded so incredulous, like he couldn’t even conceive of any possible reason anyone would like him.  

I propped myself up as well and rolled onto my side to face him.  “Max, you’re not a bad person.  You’re hurting and you’re guarded, and you probably feel like you’ve lost all hope, but you still risked your life to tell us what Nero was planning, and you still told Lucia about the generator—”

He made a sound and I couldn’t tell if he scoffed or sobbed.  His intelligence was another part of the reason I liked him, and his looks helped, but I didn’t mention either because the latter made me sound shallow and the former… the former just wasn’t as important as the choices he made.  Besides, I mostly saw his intelligence in the insane risks he took with implanting what amounted to a zap glove in his own body and injecting himself with who knows what.  I pulled him into a hug and he didn’t resist.  

For the next two days, Max barely left his bed.  His mood ranged from worried to dismal and he slept almost constantly.  I made sure he drank water and it was obvious enough that he’d followed my advice about not eating.  Lucia still hadn’t come back, which left me free to monitor Max pretty much all day.  Veronica returned after Cass woke up.  I’d eaten as soon as I got up, probably before dawn, mostly so Max wouldn’t be tormented by watching me eat, if he chose to get out of bed, so I’d left the kitchen before either of the girls went in there.  Veronica headed for  the kitchen once she arrived.  Presumably, she joined Cass for breakfast and I heard their conversation as they ate.  

Cass spoke loudly.  “’S Max okay?”

I could hear Veronica’s confusion in her tone.  “Yeah, why?”

“I think he’s sick `r something,” Cass explained, “Hardly left bed in two days and didn’t even have a single shot of vodka.”  

Veronica left Cass and walked into the guest bedroom.  I think she’d planned to check on Max, but he was still asleep and with me lying beside him, she asked me instead.  

“Is Max sick?”

I glanced at him, wondering if I should be honest or if I should lie.  I opted for a compromise.  “Yeah, but he should be fine soon.”  I didn’t really believe that.  This was only my best guess and if Usanagi couldn’t figure it out he probably had some kind of new and terrible disease that no one had discovered yet.  Even if I was right, I didn’t trust that my supervision and his minimal desire to keep living could prevent him from killing himself.  

She narrowed her eyes.  I think she thought I was generally trustworthy and honest, but she’d seen me lie for him once before, so she might be reconsidering.  “…Okay.”  Veronica turned and walked back to the kitchen.  I guess she believed me.  

After two days of sleeping and starving himself, I brought Max into the kitchen.  We’d waited until Veronica and Cass both left and nobody else had showed up in that time.  Max leaned on the back of a chair.  He still hid it very well, but he was exhausted and probably in pain from hunger alone.  I couldn’t tell if he often felt this way or if he usually used vodka and the nutrient injections to stave off starvation.  Whatever the reason, only his relative patience with me kept him from returning to bed.  He’d made that much clear twice already in two very grumbled protests.  He’d been sleeping for three days and still was grumpy when he woke up.  He watched as I took a locked box out of the fridge and opened it up to reveal the sixteen apples I’d managed to scrounge up.  He couldn’t eat bread, and with rice and bananas virtually impossible to come by, apples were about the easiest thing I could get for him to digest.  They were rare.  I’d bought most of this batch off a trader who usually dealt with tourists and NCR officers, it cost more than I normally spent in three months, but I hardly spent anything, so I’d managed to afford it.  

Max stepped back and raised his hands.  “I can’t.  How much did those cost?”

Was this his self-esteem talking or was he just afraid to test my theory because he might be let down?  I sighed and picked up an apple.  I cut a very small slice off of it and held it out to him.  “It’s fine, I can afford this, and there’s very little you can eat that wouldn’t be difficult even for a healthy digestive tract.  If I’m right, your diet will have to be mostly meat and vegetables; you’ll still need some vitamins to stay healthy.”

He didn’t move.  He eyed the apple warily.  When Max hadn’t taken it after a minute, I stepped a little closer and waved it towards him.  “Max, it’s this or squirrel kabobs, I thought this might go over better.”  

I’d expected him to take it with his hands.  I should have realized who I was dealing with.  Max leaned towards my outstretched hand and slid his tongue under the slice of apple, lifting it slightly out of my grip.  He brought his lips forward, kissing my fingertips around the apple and then pulling it into his mouth using mostly his tongue.  It left me speechless for a moment and during that moment, he smirked.  

“Did you just do that to screw with me?”

Max chuckled, “Interesting choice of words.”  He’d cheeked the apple.  

I sighed, making my exasperation just a little more obvious.  “I’d think you’d be a little more willing to eat that.  I can go back to the squirrel plan, if you’d prefer.”

“No.”  Max shifted his weight and stared at the door.  Eventually, he grumbled, “I really hope you’re right about this.”  He’d gone from despair to doubt, or at least something a little more animated, which I hoped was a good sign.  I watched him chew and swallow the apple.  He leaned against the wall and I saw him tense.  

“Are you feeling alright?”  I was probably wrong.  If he had a reaction to food this quickly, I probably was.  Either his stomach just wasn’t used to any food after he’d gone however long without eating, or he had something much more acute— and probably more serious— than celiac disease.  Most likely stomach cancer or a really, really bad ulcer; in either case, if it had gone on for this long, he’d be dead whatever I did for him.  This was the wasteland, where incurable genetic condition was the _optimistic_ theory.  

Max nodded.  He kept watching the door, as if he was afraid he’d need to run to the bathroom at any second.  “I feel a little better than usual, I guess.  I just…  It’s nothing personal…”  He was afraid I’d been wrong.  _I_ was afraid I was wrong.  

“It’s fine.”  I gathered up the apples, including the one I’d cut a slice from, and replaced them in the box, which I put back in the fridge.  I would have joined Max against the wall, but he made me a little uncomfortable right now.  It wasn’t just that he’d eaten the apple out of my hand, it was that the way he was standing on the balls of his feet, ready to run down the hall, left his muscles tense.  After having seen him dance, I wondered offhand how long he could hold that pose.  It was certainly less taxing than hanging upside-down from a pole.  

The body had trouble digesting anything when a person hadn’t eaten for a long time; I expected Max to be sick at least once in the first day, but he wasn’t.  When I asked him, he said he’d gotten very good at forcing himself not to be sick and he was doing that now.  He used a combination of breathing exercises and sheer force of will to keep himself from being sick.  I hadn’t thought about it before, but the symptoms of celiac disease could explain his physique.  He knew the nutrients he needed and if he wasn’t having a reaction, he could have sought any means available to feel in control of his body.  He must have felt helpless; he seemed absolutely terrified of being helpless, and it made sense when I really considered what he’d been through if I was right.  Psychologically, some people who lost control over their lives, or just felt helpless, would go out of their way to control others, and different people— possibly Max— would just do anything they could to control the other aspects of their lives.  He’d left something, maybe even a different life, and come here to Vegas to be a stripper.  Even now, he kept his body in ridiculously great shape to the point that he could balance on his toes.  I’d seen him working out, when he wasn’t this depressed or hungry.  I hadn’t considered how often he did it, but it might be an obsession.  Mostly, I just tried to ignore him when he did that.  I’d thought he was trying to show off, but it would make more sense if this was his way of maintaining control over a body that did things he couldn’t control or explain.  I’d also expected him to eat at most half an apple.  He ate one whole apple on the first day and wasn’t actually sick at all.  

He got sick the second day, but only once.  He had one slice of apple and refused to eat any more for the rest of the day.  I heard him crying through the bathroom door and worried that he might give up.  I thought he had when he finally emerged, walked into the bedroom, crawled into bed and curled up, still sobbing despite his efforts to stop.  He left his lip bloody from how hard he’d been biting it to keep himself quiet.  He wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the night, and after an hour of trying to calm him down, I went into the kitchen.  This was my fault, I’d gotten his hopes up and I felt miserable about it.  I should have thought of _something_ else, I should have tried _anything_ else, maybe things would have been different.  I ended up drinking most of a bottle of wine, which was a lot for me, and slept on the couch in the rec room because I couldn’t face Max right now even when he was sleeping.  Luckily nobody returned to the Lucky 38 until the next morning.  

*        *        *

I’d stretched out on my back on the bed by the time I woke up.  I hadn’t bothered to get up, I’d just spent the past hour thinking.  My stomach chewed itself like a rabid dog, but it wasn’t the same old pain, it felt different.  I was starved.  I couldn’t tell anymore if that meant the old pain would come back or not.  If it did, this would go the way it had always been going.  I’d spent the past forty minutes convincing myself to keep trying.  I’d give it a week.  If it didn’t work by then, this was over.  I wasn’t going to let myself continue to suffer when nothing was ever going to change.  But I had to try to hope.  I had to try.  

I lay on my back for another ten minutes while I wondered where Arcade was and why he wasn’t in bed beside me.  In that time, the elevator arrived.  I completely ignored the voices and sound until Veronica walked over to the foot of my bed.  

“You two have another fight?”

I opened my eyes and frowned at her.  “No, why?”

“Because Arcade’s asleep on the couch in the rec room.  Lucia wants to talk.”

“About Arcade being asleep in the rec room?” 

“No,” She frowned and corrected, “At least… I don’t think so?  She’s in the kitchen last I saw.”

I stood and Vero noticed my lip.  “What happened?”

I waved dismissively and rubbed the scab away until I saw blood on my hand.  I might actually need stitches.  “That was me.”  

Cass sauntered in with a bottle of whiskey and a half-eaten snack cake.  She’d apparently heard the conversation and seen my lip.  She smirked, “Is he that big or did things get kinky?”

“Hush.”  Veronica cringed before I spoke, probably because we thought of each other as siblings, although I doubt she wanted to hear anything like that about Arcade either even if it wasn’t true.  I certainly didn’t want to hear about her sexual exploits.  Cass laughed and I staggered sleepily past her to the kitchen.  

The kitchen was empty.  I heard Cass and Vero in the other room, though I couldn’t hear their conversation clearly, but no one interrupted me during the next two hours.  I synthesized Lily’s medicine along with some Med-X and a few other things I thought the courier might hit me for not having produced.  I had only just finished when Lucia returned from her room, changed into a fairly clean dress and seemingly planning to head to a casino or a bar.  

She skipped up to me, grinning, and I had the uncanny feeling she was about to punish me for something.  “Have you been enjoying yourself?”

“No.”  It was true enough.  

Her smile faded, but right now I think she was disappointed that she didn’t get to hurt me.  “Are you and Arcade still on good terms, or is he the reason your lip’s bleeding?”

I wiped the blood away with the back of my hand.  I’d forgotten to tend to that.  “We’re fine, this was my fault.”  

She waited for an explanation, but I guess this time she didn’t care enough to make me tell her.  “Good.  Both of you are coming with me tomorrow, I’ve got a job for you.  We’ll be away for at least two days, so get packing.”  She started towards the elevator and paused, jabbing her thumb towards the rec room.  “Go relay that message to your boy toy.”  

Aside from a momentary pause to ponder that choice description— and another much shorter pause to grab breakfast— I went to do as I’d been told.  I hadn’t exactly had time to point out my decided lack of wasteland skills, but that would have probably provoked her to kill me.  I might bring it up tomorrow, when I had a doctor with a gauss rifle at my side.  

I paused halfway across the room towards the couch.  Arcade didn’t fit on most furniture, at least not lying down.  His feet rested against the back of one arm and the way his neck curved over the other arm looked uncomfortable even if it left his hair dangling towards the floor in a fairly amusing way.  He hadn’t even bothered to change into those adorable pajamas last night.  

*       *       *

Somebody was sitting on the arm of the couch, beside my feet.  For a moment, I thought that had woken me up on its own before I noticed the hand on my knee.  Thin, strong fingers drummed on my knee cap again.  “Arcade?”  

I opened my eyes and propped myself up on my elbows.  To be honest, I hadn’t fully expected to see Max again.  After yesterday, I’d thought I might wake up to find him dead or just gone.  He seemed… uncomfortable with how much I cared about him, and with Veronica also living here I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d decided to leave the tower or even just leave the suite to take his life.  With his understanding of computers, he might have been able to reach a room in the Lucky 38 where none of us would ever find his body.  That mentality got to me on a personal level, but I could see that he might be the type to do that.  

Today, however, he looked as if yesterday had never happened.  I opened my eyes to find him perched on the arm of the couch, with one arm holding him steady as he nibbled a small slice of apple.  A scarlet line traced the edge of his lower lip, which curved in only a trace of a smile.  He was still tense, but he seemed so much happier that for a moment I worried I was dreaming.  Max patted my knee and stood up.  “Lucia wants us to go with her somewhere tomorrow.  She says we’ll be gone a few days.”

“Oh?”  Was he angry with me?  The courier had obviously asked him to relay that message, but he hadn’t even prefaced it with a `good morning.’  …but at the same time, he was eating.  “You’re only here to tell me that?”

He frowned.  “No.  I just…  I don’t want to forget or…” he glanced evasively down the hall, “or be interrupted.”  Ah.  He was afraid he was going to get sick, so he wanted to tell me the important stuff first.  His frown became more worried than quizzical, “Why?  And why did you sleep out here?”

“Uh… no reason.”  I stood up and walked over to the kitchen with Max trailing behind me.  I didn’t meet his gaze until I’d settled at the table with my own breakfast.  He didn’t believe me.  

“I know you had a reason, you usually do.”

I hesitated.  After a while, I had to admit, “You… you scared me yesterday.  I thought you’d given up.”

“Does it mean you were wrong?”  He sat down across from me, being careful not to touch the table, presumably because he was afraid of crumbs.  His rash had gone away completely.  “I just thought yesterday was the typical problems for returning to normal food after not eating for a while.”  

“It might be,” that was true, “but I wasn’t sure you knew that, and I thought you might think or somehow know that I’d been wrong.”

He scoffed and laughed, “I don’t think you’re wrong after one bad day.”  I’d seen many sides of him since we’d met.  Usually there was just his playful, seductive mask or the hopeless, hurting man who wanted nothing more than an escape from his pain, but lately I’d been seeing a different person.  I saw that side of him now, if only for a brief moment.  The smile faded from his eyes, but pain didn’t fill them; instead I saw determination on a scale I’d never seen before.  This was a man who’d survived for years in constant pain, exhausted every resource he could find in the hopes of a cure, forced himself to control his symptoms and his body as best as he could, and maybe even learned medicine in the hopes of finding a cure on his own.  Was this the man Max would be if he was cured?  Was this who he might have been if he’d never been sick?  

That adamant person faded a little as he continued to explain, “I’m giving this one week.  I won’t do anything before then, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll keep trying after that.”  The sorrow was back in his eyes.  “I _want_ this to work, I’ve never been more desperate for anything in my life,” he admitted, “but I can’t keep living like this if it fails.  I’ve been trying too long to keep believing that something else might work.”  That brought too many emotions for me to react right away.  He didn’t wait for a reply.  

“I _think_ that you’re right.”  

I didn’t.  “Why?”

“Because that pain is gone.”

“Gone?”

He shrugged and finished his slice of apple.  “It’s… difficult to be sure sometimes.  I think this pain is different.  I think that, right now, I’m just hungry.”  He went into the fridge and waited until I took the hint to unlock the box of apples for him.  He cut a larger slice and put them away while I returned to my breakfast.  “I don’t know for certain, and I admit, I was… I was scared last night.  I thought it might have failed, but now, I don’t think it did.  I know I’m not unbiased, I know that I really _want_ this to work, but… I also have faith in you.”  

I must have looked as stunned as I felt because he cocked his head to the side.  “You don’t, do you?”

“I…”  As much as the man’s fragile optimism impacted his health, I couldn’t lie when he asked me directly.  “I have my doubts.  I don’t really think I’ll be able to figure it out if Dr. Usanagi couldn’t.”  

He nodded, perfectly understanding, despite the fact that his life was on the line.  “It’s okay.”

“`It’s okay’??!”  Max frowned and nodded pointedly towards the door and I had enough decency to lower my voice.  “Max, this is your _life_ we’re talking about.  How can you accept—?”

“I accept it because I’ve stopped expecting anything different.”

“I know,” I admitted, “but you can’t just…”  I trailed off because of his expression.  He had a subtle, stubborn smile and I realized that he wasn’t going to be convinced whatever I told him.  

Max had the nerve to laugh dryly, “I really can’t believe how stubborn you are sometimes.”  He ignored my flustered attempt to explain that insisting he keep living wasn’t just stubbornness, and before I could find the words, Cass sauntered into the kitchen with an open bottle of whiskey.  

We both fell silent and looked at her.  Cass raised her hands, “Don’t mind me, I just want to make sure you don’t try to shoot him again.”

Max and I exchanged a glance.  I sighed.  “Cass, I’m _not_ going to shoot him.  I’d really appreciate if you stopped expecting that.”

She shrugged.  “So was the first time just really kinky roleplay?”

I didn’t dignify that question with an answer and apparently she took Max’s amused snort as confirmation.  He left the room while Cass began a line of questioning about the relationship we didn’t actually have.  I ate my breakfast while silently debating the pros and cons of lying to Cass and suppressing my annoyance at Max for having just left me to handle the drunken caravaner.  

*       *        *

I passed Veronica paging wistfully through an old fashion magazine while I walked over to the crate of my things in the bedroom.  She looked up.  “Max, I’m here if you need to talk…”

I stared at her in absolute confusion.  Had she realized I was sick?  …No… no, she’d just heard Arcade yell and she thought we’d had a fight.  Technically, we had, it just wasn’t the kind of fight she would have expected.  “Vero, I’m fine.”  I rummaged through my clothes, debating what to wear tomorrow.  There was always the chance that we’d be traveling into the mountains, so I’d bring a coat, but we’d probably stick to warmer climes.  I wondered vaguely if this was another robot repair run or if Lucia might be dragging me along to help with some form of medical research.  She _was_ bringing Arcade, but that seemed to be because he could shoot and wasn’t Cass or busy with other things.  It was more important that I looked unrecognizable than competent; robots didn’t care and if I was saving lives, my work would prove my skill.  I pulled out my rucksack and stuffed my only winter coat inside.  It was an old fur-lined trenchcoat, folks said it used to belong to my grandfather and supposedly my little brother had one like it, but I wasn’t sentimental about a coat.  I’m not sure if she saw what I was packing or if she just realized that I planned to go somewhere, but Veronica dropped her magazine and stood up.  

“Max, if there’s a problem, just talk to him, don’t _leave…_ ”

I scoffed and stood, slinging my mostly empty bag over my shoulder out of habit.  “I’m not leaving until tomorrow.”  When her scowl remained, I corrected, “With Arcade and Lucia.  I’m not leaving forever because of some stupid fight, you know me, Vero.”

Her judging frown became one of confusion.  “Isn’t that pretty much what you did before?”

I sighed.  She _would_ bring that up, but she didn’t know the half of it.  “That fight wasn’t the reason, only a small part of it.”  I’d never explained why I left and hadn’t planned to, but it occurred to me now that if Arcade’s theory proved wrong, I might well end my life without Veronica ever finding out my motives, so I admitted, “I left for some of the same reasons you did.  And because of… well, because it got to the point that I had to be who they wanted me to be and I have other plans.”

“So you just abandoned them?”  I should have expected her anger.  She’d always been more committed to them than I had ever been.  I’d lost my loyalty to family long ago, she was the only exception and I wasn’t loyal to her so much as I liked her.  If she’d acted like Lucia, I wouldn’t have cared what she thought of me as long as her opinion didn’t threaten my comfort.  Veronica had never known why I left, and now that she did, she was understandably pissed.  “They _need_ you, G- _Max_.”  She scowled and I knew she’d emphasized my chosen nickname pointedly.  

For most of my life, I’d known how to deal with her and I knew right now that she wanted me to get angry.  If I got angry, we could have a shouting match and we’d both be upset, but she might convince me and she’d at least know that I cared.  I didn’t.  I didn’t need to fake my calm as I simply shrugged.  “They have my brother.  Let him save them.”

Veronica smacked me.  The sentiment wasn’t really behind it, so it wasn’t hard— at least not by her standards— but it still left me reeling.  She forced herself to calm down and let out an exasperated groan.  “You’re so…!”  Her hands flailed wordlessly and she snapped, “Your little brother’s fifteen.  And on the other side of the country.  And we don’t even know…”

“Look,” I pointed out coldly, “last I heard, the kid killed a deathclaw singlehandedly, if any of them are still alive, I’d bet caps that he’s one of them.”  I’d planned to say more, but Arcade stepped into the room, carrying the overly worn backpack he occasionally took on longer trips and probably trying to escape Cass, who followed him.  They both heard the end of our conversation.  Arcade raised an eyebrow and Cass was less subtle.  

“You’ve got a brother who killed a deathclaw?  Think he’ll look like you when he grows up?”

“Cass, he’s fifteen, don’t be… making plans.”

She raised her hands, one of which held an open bottle of whiskey, “Hey, I’m just saying it’s a shame if nobody in your family even goes both ways.”  

Vero sighed and stared at her.  She’d had enough of dealing with me, I knew that when she turned her exasperated stare back my way.  “I’m gonna see if Mick and Ralph got any decent dresses yet.”  She left and after a few moments of watching me pack and probably hoping to see another thong, Cass got bored and returned to the kitchen to drink.  I’d settled onto the floor to pack so I didn’t need to array my clothing on a bed and Arcade sat down beside me to pack his own bag.  

“I didn’t realize you had a brother.”

“Half brother,” I corrected.  “Mom was… well, she was kind of a slut.”

“Oh.”  

He sounded awkward and I guess it disturbed him that I’d insulted my own mother, so I clarified, “I mean, she was great.  She raised me well and she really believed in… what we were doing, but she really did sleep around.  They realized I wasn’t her husband’s kid after he died and after she had my brother, who probably _was_ his, so they tried to groom him for… whatever, and I got the short end of the stick as the family bastard.”  I felt Arcade staring at me, but that only drove me to speak more quickly as I stared at the shorts I was folding and stacking in my bag.  “Then he acts all timid and they change their mind, they try to train me and kick him across the county, but by this point I’m not having that after they just set me aside, so I left and now he might be dead, so screw them!”  I’d gotten more emotional than I’d expected and by the end, I felt tears in my eyes.  For all I knew, my little brother had never been told that I existed, I hadn’t seen him in person since he’d been a toddler and for all my bitterness, I really hoped the kid hadn’t been hurt or imprisoned by what people wanted from him.  The very real possibility that he’d been killed hit me harder than I’d expected.  Still refusing to look at Arcade, I stuffed a pistol and a few more important tools into my pack and leaned back against the foot of the bed, staring up at the ceiling.  

A slightly callused hand slid across my shoulders and Arcade wrapped one arm around me.  “You don’t know for _certain_.  If he really killed a deathclaw, maybe he is still alive…”  My sardonic glance ended that quixotic assurance.  Arcade changed tacks.  “What was his name?”

“Arthur.”

 


	10. Wrong Place, Wrong Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucia takes Max along to help her... to about the worst place he can imagine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the end of this chapter, I'm curious to hear if people can figure out who Max is. It will be clearly stated later on, I'm just wondering if it's already been obvious or not, it certainly isn't obvious to Arcade.

Two days later, after way too much walking through blistering deserts with backpacks and munitions, we found ourselves on the road near Novac.  Lucia had yet to admit our destination, but now she pointed at the towering power plant ahead, “There.”  She sounded so bubbly and right now I almost shared her sentiment.  Helios 1, for one thing, left us with an opportunity to help most of Vegas, an opportunity that— between Max and Lucia— I felt confident we wouldn’t pass up.  For another, I’d spent the past three days worrying that her secrecy meant we were headed to Fortification Hill or at least Cottonwood Cove.  She still had the Mark of Caesar and I’d seen Lucia charge into certain death often enough that I wouldn’t have put it past her.  Luckily, we were just walking into the NCR’s second-most-coveted power plant.  

Although I still wore my usual Follower’s lab coat, Max proved more paranoid about his past.  He’d spent the last two days in tight and battered black shorts and spiked leather armor that covered very little of his skin.  The outfit left him looking like a Fiend even if he hadn’t been wearing one of their helmets above a set of soot-streaked goggles and a red bandana that covered the rest of his face.  He’d smeared what may have been oil or ink in his hair to leave it black and spiky and with the rest of his face hidden, even I wouldn’t have recognized him.  It was probably a tactical choice that, with his face completely hidden, he’d left his statuesque figure prominently displayed.  His bracers covered his forearms and his collar remained around his neck, but they blended in with his armor’s strips of leather and the heavy chain around his waist.  He carried a rucksack slung over one shoulder and he’d brought a tire iron to complete his raider disguise.  On the long, boring walk, I found myself staring at him more than once.  

I’d brought the apples and we’d picked up a brahmin steak last night— Lucia’s treat and probably some form of thanks for us joining her— and Max seemed perfectly healthy.  I think he realized this and knew what it meant.  He’d eaten his steak and this morning he’d even talked about trying to find some prickly pears when we camped tonight.  He’d had a spring in his step all day, which did nothing to make his body less distracting and I’d been watching him cross back and forth over the pavement and climb, hop, and occasionally cartwheel over rocks and ruined cars.  Lucia seemed just as distracted by the man’s athletic displays, though she didn’t know the reason.  She keep glancing my way as if I’d slipped Jet into his water.  

When Lucia announced our destination, Max had fallen slightly behind; he’d been treading the top of the divider between the lanes and keeping pace with us easily until a missing section gave him pause.  I’d expected him to jump the gap, as he’d done several times before when he’d encountered similar gaps, but when I glanced back, I found him leaning against the barricade and staring ahead at the power plant.  I couldn’t hope to guess his expression, but his shoulders sagged and something about the still of his figure suggested the truth of his mood.  

“Max?”  Lucia looked back at him when I spoke and I didn’t see her move as I walked towards him.  “What is it?”

He sighed.  “I… I’m not fond of that place.”  He scuffed his boots on the concrete behind him and scratched an itch beneath his collar.  “Fine.  Let’s go to Helios 1.  At least we’re staying somewhere else tonight, right?”

“No.”  I turned back towards Lucia in surprise and realized she’d drawn her rifle, even though she held it casually in one hand right now.  “I pulled some strings,” she explained, “We’ve got cots in the plant for the night, we’ll get to work in the morning.”

Max sighed in resignation but didn’t bother to protest.  The news balanced out his joy that he might be pain free for the rest of his life and his walk became a more neutral stride— although he changed his gait to emphasize his beauty as we neared the plant.  He probably did that because right now all but one of the soldiers outside were women.  Particularly bored-looking women who _all_ turned to watch us with something beyond typical soldier caution.  I felt uncomfortable and didn’t know if it was because Max might flirt with them or because one of them also looked at me the same way.  Did Lucia bring us just because we were guys and I was reasonably good looking?  Boone seemed like he should have been the obvious choice, but I guess he was still off fighting the Legion somewhere.  It didn’t surprise me that he’d left, but I knew he was probably dead; he’d never had much concern for his own personal safety.  I guess it was good that he hadn’t stuck around or between him and Max they would have both ended up dead.  

Lucia still had a good reputation with the NCR, and having arrived with Max and myself, the soldiers practically rolled out a red carpet.  There were men inside, but such a high percentage of women that I wondered if the NCR didn’t like putting women on the front lines or if they simply hoped to avoid pregnancy among those who’d been drafted.  I felt so uncomfortably observed that I barely considered Max until we’d reached the NCR’s lead “scientist.”  

“Fantastic!”  It was the first time Max said anything since we arrived— Lucia introduced him as a technical expert and despite their stares—skeptical and otherwise— the soldiers had let him by.  Now that he spoke, I realized he had that fake joy to his tone like he was hiding something.  I was amazed that I could tell without seeing his smirk.  Was he just scared of the NCR soldiers or was something else bothering him?  

Lucia and I both turned around to see what he sounded so excited about, but it proved to be a name.  The man in front of us looked and froze.  “Whoa!  Whoa, man, I said I was good for the caps—”

“Relax,” Max assured him, pulling down the goggles and bandana just long enough to show his smirk and very distinct face before replacing his disguise, “It’s just me, man.”  He still sounded on edge, but maybe just a little calmer.  Fantastic, on the other hand, relaxed completely.  

“Max!  You had me going there, I thought you were…  How’d you get in here, anyway?”

“He’s with me,” Lucia interjected and then turned to Max.  “You know this guy?”

“`This guy’?  I’m fucking _Fantastic_.”

“ _Clearly._ ”  

Max, standing beside me, was the only one who heard my muttered retort and he laughed.  It was a genuine laugh and he seemed just a little more sincere in his good humor when he explained, “Fantastic came by the Gomorra pretty often, but that was a while ago.”  Both of us inferred the wrong thing and Max raised his hands, “No, he’s straight— I think—”

“Fuck yeah, I’m straight.”  Fantastic gestured at the building around us, “Have you _seen_ how many chicks they’ve got working here?  I couldn’t ask for a sweeter gig!”  He paused and thought aloud, “Well… maybe I could.  Maybe if they paid me in chems and all the women were naked…”  He looked at Max, “Hey, man, how easy is it to work at the Gomorra?”

“I don’t recommend it, the pay’s terrible, and they’ve got iron-clad contracts, pain in the ass to get out.”  

*       *       *

Lucia glared at me.  “Let’s just get on with this, shall we?”  She focused on Fantastic and the two got into a bit of an argument before Lucia offered sex and convinced him.  I heard this because I was listening in, but Arcade had pulled me aside to talk.  

“Is he as stupid as he seems?”  The doctor whispered, but I didn’t expect Fantastic to hear him while he was dealing with Lucia.  The man had a very one-track mind.  

“He’s more stupid.”  I added, mostly to gauge his interest in me, “I haven’t slept with him, in case you’re wondering.”

*      *       *

“I wasn’t.”  I was, but I found I often wondered that when it came to Max.  I tried not to think about how often it might be true.  I changed the subject.  “Are you just on edge because of the NCR soldiers everywhere?”

He bobbled his head noncommittally.  “It’s partly that.  It’s a lot of things, let’s just get this plant working and get out of here.”

Lucia came back over to us with Fantastic trailing behind her.  “Max, you think you can figure this place out?”

Max crossed his arms and nodded a little evasively.  “Yeah.”

She gestured towards the room around us and Fantastic protested, “What?  He can’t figure this out, he’s just good with chems.  Besides, I said the main controls—”

Max cut him off, “The main controls aren’t here, they’re in a separate building and it’s got a system of turrets and probably some other robotic security so getting there might be tricky.”

“Can’t you hack those?”

“I need a terminal to hack those and I’m not sure where one might be; these aren’t connected to the mainframe, unless that’s been fixed.”

Lucia had been frowning since he first interrupted.  “Were you listening in?”

“No,” he replied, probably lying.  He wanted to leave it at that, but the three of us and Ignacio, a Follower I’d never met but knew was working here, stared at him until he admitted, “I’ve just been here before.”

Lucia frowned.  “You’ve been here before.”  She sounded skeptical, I think.  

Fantastic shrugged and Ignacio spoke up, reminding all of us that he existed, “When were you here?  The NCR never sent any scientists and before them, this plant was occupied by the Brotherhood of Steel…”

Max’s silence suggested the answer.  I asked.  “Max, were you here with the Brotherhood?”  

He looked my way, but I couldn’t read his expression through his disguise and he quickly explained to the others, “Last time I was here, I was thirteen, and trust me, that did not fucking go well.”

That must have been years ago… maybe he fled the NCR and wound up at Helios One before they reached the Mojave.  It seemed more likely than the idea that he might have infiltrated an organization with as much reason to kill him as the Brotherhood, although admittedly he didn’t seem to hate them as much as he hated the NCR.  

Ignacio seemed to process that statement and Fantastic exclaimed, “You were here as a kid?  How’d you get by the tin cans?”  Presumably, he meant the Brotherhood, which suggested he thought Max was considerably younger than I judged him to be or else the man just had no sense of time at all.  

Lucia frowned at Max, possibly trying to judge if Fantastic was right or if he’d been here before the Brotherhood.  He couldn’t be younger than twenty-five, he was just malnourished, like most of the wasteland, so he must have left long before the Brotherhood arrived.  “You remember anything about how to get this place working?”

Max laughed without much real humor, though he faked it.  “I never even went in that building; you know me.  I’m not cut out for combat.  I’d have just gotten myself killed.”

We reconnected the mainframe to the rest of the system with a few seconds of clearing our way to the terminals and a few more seconds of Max hacking his way inside.  It was early evening when we finished, but Lucia opted to rest rather than fight the security system tonight.  

After we’d all eaten, she’d us shown to our cots and went off to do who knows what.  I presumed she had NCR business to deal with and I was more than happy to be left alone with Max.  The soldiers agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to guard the doors of this room and allow us some privacy inside.  Lucia would be sleeping on the room’s second cot because apparently she’d assumed we’d share a bed and I didn’t mind: at the very least sharing a bed with Max meant I might actually have a chance at sleeping despite being in the metaphorical lion’s den and he seemed like he might need me there for the same reason.  

I sat on the edge of the bed and took off my boots.  I was used to being on my feet for extended periods of time, but trekking halfway across the Mojave over the past few days had me a little more sore than usual.  As if taunting my aching feet, Max paced the dusty floorboards.  

“Just because you’re still moving doesn’t mean we’re getting out of here any faster.”

Max sighed and joined me on the bed.  He slid his boots off and rubbed the blisters on his feet.  “Sorry.  I just… I don’t want to be here.”

“That makes two of us.”  I took off my lab coat and folded it on the floor beside the bed.  I hadn’t packed pajamas because I didn’t bother with them when we camped— I’d rather sleep in my normal clothes in case we were ambushed.  I didn’t need the people shooting at me to also be laughing at my choice of sleepwear.  Besides, folks dropped by to talk to Lucia at the most inopportune times.  

Max, presumably following my lead, stood back up and stripped.  He kept his bracers, his collar, and a pair of uncomfortably tight briefs— thankfully he’d worn normal underwear and not another sequined thong.  I hadn’t expected the man to sleep in spiked leather armor, but I’d figured he’d leave his shorts on.  Max turned around and found me staring.  He looked surprised.  For once, he hadn’t intentionally tried to make me uncomfortable.  “Tight denim isn’t good sleepwear,” he explained, “and I wasn’t going to sleep in the armor.  I’ve got a winter coat, if you want me to look like a flasher…”

“No.”  I was blushing.  “No, it’s fine.”  I lay down and slid towards the wall to give him room to join me.  He did.  Even when he wasn’t trying to show off, it seemed that every inch of his body must have been stolen from a DaVinci sculpture except his face.  I tried to focus on his eyes.  It didn’t help.  He had no hint of his usual feigned happiness, right now everything was genuine.  He looked grateful and a little nervous, but mostly he had a gleam in his eyes that I’d only seen a few times before.  He had the look of a man who would stop at nothing to survive.  I knew that determination was the only reason he’d stayed alive as long as he had and I had to admit it was… captivating.  

Max snapped me out of my daze with a blink.  “Am I that distracting?”

“Y-Yes.”  

He chuckled.  “I’m not _trying_ to be distracting right now.”

“I can tell.”

He frowned.  One hand slid off the bed behind him and Max remarked, “You know me well enough to realize that?”

“You’ve been pretty open with me, and it isn’t like we haven’t spent much time around each other.”

He nodded thoughtfully.  “Most people can’t tell when I’m lying.  Or when I’m trying to distract them.  You can.  And thanks, by the way.”

“Thanks for taking the time to understand you or for saying that you’re so distracting I find myself staring whether I want to or not?”

He chuckled and inched a little closer.  When his knee brushed my thigh, I tried to back away and found I was already pressed against the wall.  Somehow I decided not to point that out to him.  “I meant thanks for curing me.  Or, you know, diagnosing me and telling me how not to feel sick.  I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”  

He had that look in his eyes again like some spark inside of him had been rekindled.  He’d looked almost dead before and now I don’t think I’d ever seen someone so alive.  How was this the same man?  The red-green spectrum of his eyes looked steely in the dark.  The exact shade actually called to mind power armor and reminded me exactly how much I had in common with this man.  Maybe I really could be even more open with him.  I’d hinted at my past for weeks and so had he, but neither of us had _actually_ admitted that we’d been born in the Enclave.  Granted, an NCR power plant wasn’t necessarily the best place to tell him, but they couldn’t hear us in here…  

Max kissed me.  To be fair, I should really have expected that, but it caught me off-guard.  He made and wore a lip balm to keep his lips from cracking in the dry desert air; I remembered it from our previous kiss but this time the mutfruit flavoring mixed with the taste of the apples we’d both had for dinner.  His lips parted against my own and his tongue slipped into my mouth.  I lost track of time.  Max clearly had experience kissing— I’d guessed that after our first kiss even though his profession hadn’t been a guarantee.  Probably another reason the Gomorra had hired him despite his face, although that square, powerful countenance was starting to appeal to me.  Out of habit, I reached up to stroke his hair and changed plans when my fingers touched the stiff, dried ink.  The strap of the goggles had left an imprint in his skin and I traced that back from his brow before running my hand over the stubble on his jaw.  I hadn’t realized until that point that Max was only kissing.  He’d initiated the kiss but stopped as if he regretted it, or maybe he just couldn’t be sure I was interested, but now he raised his hand and tentatively mirrored what I was doing to him.  

*        *         *

I’d kissed him in the hope of distracting myself and it had worked.  After five years at the Gomorra, my body knew what it was doing and instinct kept urging me to act and I kept resisting it.  This was Arcade, I had to keep reminding myself of that fact.  He wasn’t some person who paid for my services and had to get off and get out, he wasn’t even one of my misguided customers who spent most of their time talking to me; he was a friend.  Maybe more than that.  I wanted to kiss him.  I wanted… more than that, I think.  I still wasn’t sure.  I’d never really considered romance, hell, I hadn’t even believed in it for years.  Love was just a product of hormones and misguided beliefs in something that wasn’t real— like tribals who thought the sun rose and set because their god-chief told it to.  I’d been too miserable and in pain to really trust those old stories and for a time I’d wondered if everyone was in this much pain and I was just a wuss, but now that wasn’t the case.  I felt so… alive, like everything was new and maybe, if I could feel happy, anything was possible.  And I _did_ feel happy, especially right now.  If I focused on his mouth, and the sage-y smell of his clothes, and the softness of his hair, I could forget where we were and I was happy.  

And I _did_ want sex, regardless of whether or not love existed or even played a part, I wanted to sleep with him, but was that what he wanted?  Would he ascribe some profound meaning to it, if we had sex?  Would he be understanding if I didn’t?  Did he even want that, or was this just hormones, and proximity, and the fact that I’d been very seductively messing around with him since we’d met just because it made him uncomfortable?  I didn’t want to force Arcade into this.  The kiss had been a mistake, I’d only respond to his advances from now on.

I followed his lead and ran my fingers through his hair and down over less than a day’s growth of pale stubble.  His hair was softer than mine, and that was probably more due to genetics than the sort of chemical shampoo I used.  I’d never met anyone else with hair this soft and silky.  

One strong hand stroked the muscles of my shoulder and nudged me onto my back.  Without breaking the kiss, I took the suggestion.  Arcade’s other hand traced the contours of my clavicle and worked its way towards my waist, stroking across the shape of every muscle it passed.  I couldn’t resist.  I pressed my mouth against his to kiss him even more deeply and propped myself up on my elbows, intending to press our bodies together more completely.  After my time at the Gomorra, I’d become something of an expert at getting myself hard without needing to use my hands and I think he had yet to realize I was ready to go in that regard.  Arcade had still been lying on his side beside me, and I’d expected him to stay like that unless I suggested something different; I figured, because he’d rolled me onto my back, that he was just planning to give me a hand job, but either I’d changed his mind just now or he’d had something else in mind from the start.  To my surprise, Arcade rolled to kneel between my thighs.  I spread my legs instinctively, but the whole move demonstrated much more agility than I’d expected from him.  He broke the kiss for only a moment and didn’t glance down; he guided himself with the hand that had been on my cheek.  I felt it on my hip and then below that.  I wrapped my legs around his back and hauled myself forward until our crotches touched as soon as I felt his other hand sliding around to pull my hips towards him.  By this point, I still wore my briefs and he hadn’t taken off more than his coat; I didn’t expect that to change.  I ground my hips against his crotch, feeling that he was also already hard.  I would have kept going if he hadn’t stopped me.  

He broke the kiss to gasp, “Just… wait a moment…”  I nipped his earlobe but obeyed.  Rather than guess what he was planning, I felt him part my legs enough that he had room to pull his pants and briefs down to his thighs.  I guessed where this was going now and slid one hand off the bed to feel through my bag while he delved into my own drawers.  Nearly skin-tight cotton didn’t exactly hide anything, but he waited until he had my cock out and visible to remark.  “I guess Max really was an appropriate stage name.”

“It _is_ my real name, you know.”

“But not your first name.”  He kissed my neck and rocked his hips against mine.  One hand explored the length and shape of my dick, holding his own so the two rubbed together.  

I got the sense that he wanted to leave the name discussion for later, but some part of me hoped he’d figure out who I was.  I felt guilty having sex with him if we might be enemies later on; I was almost afraid to breathe in case I would moan, but I managed to gasp a hint, “Max isn’t my first name, it’s— it’s part of my surname.”

Arcade either didn’t notice or hadn’t heard of my family.  He nipped my shoulder.  I passed a small metal jar behind his back so I could use two hands to open it.  The Gomorra had gotten me in the habit of carrying lube at all times and I’d brought some with me on a whim.  I’d been right to think that sex distracted him more than most people; I had the jar back in my bag in under a minute and Arcade flinched when I suddenly wrapped a very slippery hand around our cocks.  

“Of _course_ you brought lube on this trip.”

“I never go anywhere without it.”  I kissed him again and that kiss lasted until we both finished.  

My heart was pounding by that point and I broke the kiss to breathe.  Arcade pulled his pants up and lay beside me on his stomach with his head on my shoulder.  He seemed concerned until I felt like I could breathe again.  I hoped his concern was medical and he wasn’t about to ask what there was between us.  I banked on the former and admitted, “I know, my heart sometimes… objects to this sort of activity.”  

“I’d say intermittent cardiac arrhythmia is a little more than a simple `objection’.”  He gave up on the subtlety of simply listening to my chest and slid a hand under my collar to check my pulse.  His fingers brushed the scab on my throat and he pushed the leather out of the way to examine it.  “Max, what happened?”

I caught his hand and pushed it away.  “It’s a long story.”  He narrowed his eyes.  He knew it was a fairly recent wound, but I wasn’t going to explain.  I’d rather dwell on the awkwardness of my current feelings than distract myself by contemplating my situation with Lucia.  Sex had only distracted me while it was happening and now I just felt more uncomfortable and exposed.  I grabbed the coat out of my bag and used it as a blanket although I knew it wasn’t really going to help.  At least if a soldier came inside for some reason, I’d be a little further from nude.  I sighed and closed my eyes.  I didn’t want to deal with Arcade right now because I didn’t want to tell him— about Lucia _or_ about why I disliked Helios 1— but he picked up on my mood.  

“…Was it bad?”  He sounded so dejected.  

I opened my eyes to answer and found he looked even more dejected than he sounded.  Did he think I hadn’t wanted this or did he just think he was really bad in bed?  “No.”  I shook my head and picked at the ink caked in my hair.  “No, I just… I was looking for a distraction and this shouldn’t have been my method.”

“So you don’t—?”

“No, it has nothing to do with you.”  He thought I wasn’t interested in him or he had some similar concern and that wasn’t it at all.  “I… I shouldn’t have done this here.  With _anyone_.  It’s just…  I was trying not to think about where we are, and sex distracted me for a while but now… now it just feels _wrong_ that… _here_ …”  I sighed and stared at the ceiling.  “I’m not making any sense, am I?”  The ceilings in this plant all looked the fucking same and that didn’t help.  Looking straight up, I couldn’t tell any different between this room and the room where…  I gagged and stood up, putting my coat on properly and pacing.  

Arcade propped himself up and watched me tread a path across the dusty floor.  I kept my distance from the doors and the cot, which limited me to an awkwardly small space where I trekked a random shape and left painful footprints in the dust.  At least one of my blisters had burst and I’d rather appreciate the pain and risk infection than bandage the wound; it seemed like some small penance for having sex in this place.  

“You’re… making _some_ sense…”  He nodded towards the door.  “NCR soldiers hardly create the ideal mood.”

*       *       *

Max glared at the door with a level of hatred I’d only ever seen from Moreno.  I was almost surprised that he didn’t start a rampage through the building and it seemed a testament to his renewed desire to live that he merely snarled and balled his hands into fists.  “If I had any choice in the matter, those fuckers wouldn’t be here.”

After his previous apathy, outright loathing proved that he cared about something, but it was hardly ideal.  I tried to be understanding.  My mother had died in her sleep and granted, the NCR hadn’t helped and I wasn’t fond of them, but he’d seen them shoot his mother, and it had probably scarred him for life.  He might be justified in hating them, but considering he’d be the one Lucia trusted to operate the terminal which controlled the Archimedes laser, I felt a little less accepting of his animosity.  

“Max—”  A dog outside heard my voice and barked, possibly because it shared his name, and the bark precipitated a stream of stifled curses.  Max half-heartedly stomped one foot and turned on his heel to pace the other way, but the motion made him wince and he hopped back over to the cot.  He dropped onto the bed beside me, cradling that foot and I saw that the skin had torn completely open.  “Shit.  Max, stay still.”  He grumbled something that seemed to be broken Russian and dug into his bag.  I stopped struggling to leave the cot without forcing him to move when he placed a medical kit on the bed beside him.  

I think he meant to tend the wound himself, but I grabbed tweezers and tried to help.  The several hundred year old wood had left his foot bristling with splinters, but there was only one pair of tweezers, and he didn’t protest.  Perching on the bed with his right ankle on his left knee left Max uncomfortably off-balance so I wasn’t surprised that he was soon leaning back against my chest while I rested my chin on his shoulder so I could see what I was doing.  Between the dead wood and the near-complete lack of calluses on his feet, it ended up being minor surgery to get his foot back to the point where it would heal well.  I thought about asking if he wanted painkillers, but he hadn’t brought any out of his bag and I couldn’t easily get around him to reach my own medical kit.  More importantly, he’d mentioned earlier that he couldn’t take painkillers; some did use wheat gluten as a bonding agent, so he would have a reaction to them and after reaching the point where he wanted to kill himself to end the pain, I fully expected that a man with his skill as a chemist had already developed high resistance to virtually all of them.  

I couldn’t quantify the pain he’d been in all his life, but the man barely reacted to surgery without any kind of analgesic, he just gritted his teeth and scowled at the wall.  His eyes watered and his breathing hitched occasionally, but I had no idea if that was due to physical pain or his emotions.  Most people would be screaming right now and he just sat there like he’d stubbed his toe.  It was more than a little impressive, but also sad to think what he must have been dealing with before.  Nobody taught me how much pain celiac caused because as far as I knew, Max was the only case in living history.  People with genetic conditions didn’t usually survive to reproduce, and with the Enclave all but gone, Max was probably the only person alive who carried the gene.  Actually, that might be wrong.  I found myself wondering if he had any kids.  He’d worked as a prostitute for at least a few years, if he’d serviced female clients, was there a chance a few might have gotten pregnant?  For all I knew, the Mojave would have an outbreak of celiac in a few months, which might be good if it became independent, considering most wheat products were either pre-war or shipped in from the NCR.  Still, I’m not sure what I thought of that possibility.  It bothered me a little that the man might have dozens of kids without his knowledge, or that those kids might never see their increasingly amazing father.  On the other hand, if he was gay, it might be nice that he had already had kids.  

“My mother died here,” Max blurted out.  

I stared at him, completely forgetting the surgery I hadn’t yet finished.  “Uh… what?”


	11. Archimedes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plot and plotting with Lucia and Max.

*       *      *

Either he’d been focused on the surgery, or he’d been distracted by the fact that he was more or less straddling me to reach my foot with both hands, or he was just too shocked to process that.  

“My mother died here,” I repeated.  “Not _here_ specifically, but downstairs, in that hallway before the big open room.  I was with her when it happened.  I… I thought sex would…” I scowled at my leg and resisted the urge to punch the cot beneath me.  I’d been such an idiot about this!  I couldn’t _not_ tell Arcade, or he’d blame himself, as always, or else he’d just worry about me, also as always, but I hated having to talk about this.  I didn’t want to lie to him, and not just because he might be able to tell I was lying.  I’d never intended to deceive him about anything.  “I was trying to distract myself.”

“Oh…shit …”  He sat back, leaning against the wall behind me and completely forgetting about my foot.  Rather than let the wound keep bleeding while I dwelled on my past, I scowled at the incisions.  I’d never been very good at judging whether or not a wound needed stitching and stims probably wouldn’t work well on my extremities, especially in a room this cold.  I grabbed a swab and a bottle of alcohol intending to fix it myself but that snapped Arcade out of his daze.  I leaned back against his chest as he took them from me and let him tend to it instead.  I’d never been good with wounds, even my own.  

I didn’t welcome the loss of such a painful distraction as tending the wound myself, but I focused on my pain while he cleaned and stitched the cuts.  I could feel my other foot scabbing against the floor, but it wasn’t as bad.  Luckily, I guess, Arcade revived the conversation.  

“Max…  Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

He hesitated.  I could tell, whatever I’d said, he _wanted_ to talk about it.  He had some question like scorpion in a bag and as much as he didn’t want to ask for my sake, I could tell it was going to bother him for days if I didn’t just get it over with.  

“What is it?”

He got that look like he planned to brush it off and I scowled, so he asked sheepishly, “You were here, at Helios One, when your mother was shot by NCR soldiers?”

“Yes.”

He frowned down at my foot, bandaging it so I could hopefully walk tomorrow and we wouldn’t be stuck here for another night.  He had a very distinct set to his jaw and I could tell he was figuring something out.  Worst case scenario, he’d realized who I was.  Best case…  Well, it was more likely that he’d realized I was Brotherhood, I’m pretty sure I had him under the impression that we’d both been born in the Enclave.  With his looks, knowledge, and that battered old plasma defender he carried, along with his skill at deflection and the topics that made him evasive, it hadn’t been difficult to figure out.  He was lucky Veronica and Boone either didn’t know or didn’t care, and Lucia seemed to dismiss him as just an ordinary Follower.  I guess he was also fortunate that unlike most of the Brotherhood, I’d never cared about old grudges.  I held grudges for things I had witnessed; I didn’t care about the Enclave and I wouldn’t have cared about the NCR if it wasn’t personal.  I didn’t hold with the idiotic idea that the solution to unethical experimentation was to lock up all technology and hide in our bunkers like dragons guarding a hoard, but I’d stopped caring about the rest of the Brotherhood long ago, at least that’s what I told myself.  Hopefully Arcade would recognize that I’d left the Brotherhood and my heritage was no more important than his.  But maybe he hated the Brotherhood the same way I hated the NCR.  

I’d gone back to staring at the wall and trying to keep my thoughts far away from here when Arcade finally voiced his realization.  “Were you telling the truth when you said you were eighteen?”

I nodded.  “Nineteen now, but I was.”

He gave me a long, disconcerted stare.  Unwilling to deal with the ethical arguments I’d heard far too often, I nodded at my foot.  “Just hand me the bandages and let me finish that myself so I can do the other one.”

“The other one?”

“It’s not as bad.”  I wrapped my right foot a few more times and taped it in place, stretching that leg along the cot to get at my other foot.  With Arcade still sitting behind me, I nearly ended up stretched across his lap, but he realized this and quickly retreated to lying on his side against the wall behind me.  I leaned backwards teasingly out of habit.  He nudged me off of him and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.  

*       *       *

It did occur to me, briefly, that Max might have been part of the Brotherhood of Steel, but I dismissed that.  I felt so certain that he was Enclave.  In retrospect, that had probably been my own wishful thinking to be so blind to all the signs of who he was, but at the time I sought any other possible explanation.  If the NCR had been stupid enough to hire an idiot like Fantastic, it wasn’t so impossible that they might have hired an ex-Enclave scientist, who may have brought her son with her.  Maybe they’d been found out, and that was when she’d been shot.  I tried not to dwell on the reasons he might have been here; his age seemed much more important at the time.  

It didn’t sound like he’d joined the Gomorra recently, so he’d been a prostitute as a teenager, maybe even since he’d been thirteen.  Also, he’d had a birthday somewhere in the past few weeks and not even mentioned it, and I’d just slept with a nineteen-year-old.  What the hell was wrong with me?  And how did he wind up looking thirty?

I found myself staring at his face while he cleaned and bandaged his other foot.  He was right, this one wasn’t serious, although anything could get infected in the wasteland.  I trusted him to handle it himself while I tried to sort through everything I’d just discovered.  

Both of us stayed silent for nearly an hour.  Max bandaged his foot and then sat perfectly still, one leg stretched along the edge of the bed and the other folded mostly beneath him.  He hunched over on the cot and stared blankly at the floor.  Lost in thought was my most optimistic theory; between his memories of this place, his hatred of the NCR, and our conversation, he could have been contemplating suicide or a massacre.  My reaction to his age probably didn’t help.  

Studying his face, I realized his bone structure and dark hair made him look older than he was and the lines and hollow look that came from everything he’d been through added to the effect.  He wasn’t thirty and he hadn’t been lying; he really was nineteen.  I felt like an idiot that I hadn’t noticed sooner and I was still feeling that way when Lucia strode through the door.  Even though both of us were still fully clothed— or I was and Max’s winter coat covered him up— we looked fairly disheveled and given the rumors circulating the Lucky 38, I figured that Lucia realized we’d had sex.  I still ran my hands through my hair in an effort to get it back into a somewhat presentable style and I lay on my stomach in case she planned to talk to us; this was Lucia, I never knew when she was going to mention some errand she wanted to run or some cave or vault she wanted to investigate after we finished our current goal.  

Rather than suggest that we drop by Repconn and then visit the Gun Runners on the way back, or something similarly involved, Lucia had a question.  She eyed Max, who didn’t seem to have noticed her as he hadn’t moved in the past twenty minutes.  “Did you two have another fight?”

Max spoke up before I could deflect, “Do we _look_ like we had a fight?”

I could feel myself blushing as I frowned at him.  Ignoring my expression, Max flopped onto his back on the cot and rolled towards me until he couldn’t get any closer.  He snuggled against me and closed his eyes.  I turned my stare on Lucia because I knew if I looked at Max, I’d cave.  Lucia couldn’t see his face now that he had it buried between me and the upturned sheepskin collar of his coat, so he would have dropped his facade and I’d see that he was in pain, and terrified of the NCR right outside this room, and remembering that he watched his mother die downstairs.  I didn’t want to push him out of the bed either way, but I didn’t trust myself to stick to my plan of not letting this become a romantic relationship if I saw how much he needed someone.  I hadn’t planned to have sex with him to begin with, however amazing he looked, but the man just had away of thwarting my better judgement.  Or I just had no self control.  There was that.  

The courier had the nerve to giggle.  “You two couldn’t resist the charm of a dusty pre-war power plant?  People have died here, you know.”

Max coughed against my chest.  He seemed to curl up as if he was cold, bringing his hands up to his face.  He seemed to shiver.  Glancing down, I saw he’d shut his eyes and bit his knuckle to keep quiet.  Either he was crying, or he was forcing himself not to scream.  Lucia didn’t seem to notice.  

*       *       *

It took every ounce of my self control to force my breathing back into a steady rhythm.  That fucking bitch _would_ say that.  She talked to Veronica all the time, I’d heard that the two were good friends and even though she didn’t know the truth of who I was, she knew I was Brotherhood and she knew about my mother.  She knew my mother had died here and she probably knew about my brother; anything Veronica knew of my life was now fuel for Lucia’s torture.  I hadn’t cared enough to fight back.  

For years, I’d stopped caring about that; before Lucia, there had been Nero.  In the Mojave, it had seemed natural that I would either have to defend myself against all the armies that were after me or I’d need to accept protection from someone with the power to make my life more miserable than it already was.  For years, I’d accepted the least misery I could find while hiding from my past and for years I hadn’t bothered to seek anything else both because it seemed hopeless and because I had fully expected to be dead soon.  But I was still alive.  Not only that, but I wasn’t in pain, at least not constant, unexplained pain, this pain was my own damn fault.  My feet would heal.  Lucia, however, would not go away so easily.  I couldn’t defend myself alone, I couldn’t ask my friends to put their lives on the line for me— that was part of why I left the Brotherhood— but Lucia had given me access to the safest place in the Mojave, if not the safest place in the world.  And I understood how it worked better than she did.  

*       *       *

“Yeah.”  I tried to pass off my tone as simple discomfort at that realization.  “You know, this should be obvious, but I’d appreciate it if you send the power to Freeside tomorrow.”  

Lucia took off her armor but kept on the shirt and leggings she wore beneath it as she flopped onto her cot facing me.  “Why not the whole region equally?”

“Uh, McCarran and the Strip already have Hoover Dam.  You think they need _more_ power?”

She retorted with what I took to be patience.  “If the Legion takes the dam, they’d lose _all_ power.”  Before I could accept her point and agree, she added, “Besides, I’m going to see if Max can set it up so the power can be redirected from the Lucky 38.”

“That’s fair.”  It was unlikely, unless this system had some way receiving input remotely, which I doubted, but if it could be done, that would let us power Freeside and redirect to the entire region if something happened to the Dam.  Lucia hadn’t addressed Max directly and as he seemed to be feigning sleep that was probably for the best.  He’d stopped shaking, but hadn’t opened his eyes and I could feel the very forced steadiness of his breathing.  He’d broken the skin on his knuckle again and I could see tears gleaming in the dim light.  Outside, the dog barked again and he flinched.  

Lucia stretched luxuriously, oblivious to the state Max was in.  “Well, I guess I’ll ask him about that tomorrow, good night.”

“Good night,” I replied automatically, looking back at Max as she turned off the lantern.  I ran a hand over his bristly, ink-caked hair and waited.  Some time after my eyes adjusted to the darkness, he finally relaxed.  He didn’t meet my gaze, he just lay very still, tracing the bite on his knuckle with the fingers of his other hand.  It wasn’t deep enough to really need medical attention, but a bandage could help.  I wanted to comfort him but recognized that he didn’t want Lucia to know about his history with Helios One, or at least not the full depth of it.  I wrapped an arm around him and hoped we’d both be able to relax enough to get some rest while we were here or else tomorrow would be even more miserable.  Somehow he fell asleep before I did.  

*       *       *

Between Arcade and Lucia and their respective gauss and anti-material rifles, getting to the mainframe wasn’t a problem.  It bothered me more deeply than I’d expected to hear the report of a gauss rifle in these Old World halls— or at all— but I kept my expression neutral and if Arcade noticed my discomfort, he must have attributed it to my mother’s death and nothing more.  

I couldn’t hide the pain of my feet so easily.  In the morning, I hobbled out of bed when we ate and continued to limp whenever I had to move.  I felt like I was walking on glass, which made a pleasant enough change from feeling like I’d eaten it.  At least this was less likely to lead to embarrassing consequences, and that included the way Arcade kept checking on me when I’d lag behind.  I still hated feeling helpless, even though I knew he meant well.  I certainly wouldn’t be frolicking about on the way back like the Mojave was the set for an elaborate dance routine.  Although, once my feet healed, I toyed with the idea of replicating the dance scene from “Singing in the Rain.”  Despite the utter lack of rain.  

I was debating where I might do this (once my feet healed) when we finally reached the main frame.  Lucia waved me towards the terminal while Arcade couldn’t help but look around.  He was trying to surreptitiously find the controls of the weapon, no doubt.  He had as much reason to hate the NCR as I did; Lucia might be working with them, and Arcade probably didn’t want to kill her, he was too nice, but the NCR had dogged us all our lives.  At the very least, if I were him, I’d want to know how to activate the weapon so I could come back to do it if they won.  After we helped Lucia, the NCR might even let him in willingly, not that I planned to waste this chance myself.  I’d already known about the Archimedes I and II before Lucia had brought me here; after yesterday I knew even more about them.  The coding was simple enough even if the system prevented remote control of the plant or laser.  If Lucia just asked me to send power to the entire grid, she knew too little about the technology to realize what I was doing, she could only see results.  As such, I knew I could program the plant to power the whole grid initially and redirect to Freeside after a week, when Lucia would be far away.  I could set the Archimedes I to activate on a similar delay, and that might even prevent Lucia from returning to alter my system.  Her point about avoiding an outage was moot, by my reasoning: if the Lucky 38’s generator had been activated (I hadn’t checked while inside and had no idea if the tower’s extra systems would restart automatically or had simply been shut off or broken) the Strip would handle an outage and probably wouldn’t lose power at all, only McCarran would suffer the loss if the Legion took the dam.  And, by my predictions, they would— Lucia hadn’t done enough to give the NCR the advantage.  So long as no one found or attacked the Brotherhood, McNamara would have an easy win taking the Mojave from the battle-weary remnants of the Legion.  Hopefully, if that happened, they wouldn’t screw it up.  

I’d had the idea last night, but I paused to consider how I’d do it and Lucia waved impatiently towards the terminal again.  “Well?  Go on.”  She had this look like someone trying badly to train their dog and that made it all the more satisfying to stare at her like she was an idiot.  

Lucia waited by the stairs to the balcony which left Arcade between me and her.  He looked over at me, failing to notice my expression beneath the goggles I’d donned again, but he noticed the ruined power cable behind me.  Lucia reacted to my defiance before he could speak.  

Without a word, she glared and raised her massive rifle to point at the back of Arcade’s head.  She’d been doing this for the past three days, whenever I resisted her, and I had yet to decide if I dared call her bluff.  This time the dispute was settled without me having to cave.  

Arcade nodded to the generator, “The terminal doesn’t have enough power to function.  We’ll need to fix that wire before we can do anything.”   He noticed that I was standing perfectly still and staring over his shoulder.  Lucia had lowered the gun before he turned around.  “What?”

She beckoned me over and feigned ignorance.  “Upstairs looks like it might have stuff to fix that.  Max, would you come help me out?  You know how to fix this wire, right?”  I still hated how she played the naive schoolgirl so well.  I’d known a lot of girls like her at the Gomorra, but none of them had ever been quite so dangerous.  They’d done things like spread lies about me and talk behind my back, worst I’d ever had from them was psycho-laced vodka— I’d gotten a bad nosebleed, collapsed, and Nero found out who was responsible so I never saw them again.  Lucia was less the yappy dog in sheep’s clothing and more the deathclaw.  If I really turned her against me, I’d wind up dead and framed for murder, but I didn’t expect that she’d ever kill Arcade, him being the one person whose idyllic perception of her left him virtually blind to anything she might do.  

“I’m no Raul, but I can probably figure it out, it should just take some conductive metal and insulation.”  I looked the wire over while Lucia continued.  

“Arcade, this place seems to be just desks and office stuff, but do you want to check around and see if you find anything down here?”

“Sure.”  He rummaged through desks and I followed Lucia upstairs to what I knew was going to be a very threatening talk.  

Once we were out of earshot, she rounded on me.  I expected hostility, but I got a more shrewd stare.  She was reevaluating me.  “I know you care about him.”

That much was true.  I studied the room around us rather than meet her gaze; there was a repair robot in the corner and if I got it working, we would lose our pretense for waiting alone up here and she would lose her chance to talk to me.  She didn’t know the NCR had reason to want Arcade and me dead, she might not even realize that they had reason to kill me, and alone in the room that held the controls of the Archimedes I, the NCR outside was hardly a threat.  Arcade and I could take Lucia down in a fight and activate the weapon to clear our escape, if we needed to.  If I could avoid it, I had a safer idea to escape my bargain with her: I could reprogram Yes Man to trap her and if that failed, I knew where she slept.  I nodded and started bypassing the security protocols to activate the robot to repair the wire.  

“You had better not program that thing to attack, or I’ll kill him.”

“I know.”  Maybe it was how much I hated her or maybe I just hadn’t quite regained my sense of self-preservation, but I grinned and added, “What’s the matter, don’t you trust me?”

“Not with orbital lasers.”  She stepped closer and grabbed me by the collar, forcing me to face her.  She was stronger than she looked and I didn’t bother to resist.  Lucia shoved her face right up to mine and snarled, “Listen, I want you to set this up so I can reroute the power remotely.  I want full control of this plant from the Lucky 38.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t…”  She raised her rifle as I spoke and aimed pointedly towards the stairs.  “I know you could turn on that weapon, and I know the two of you might be able to kill me, but I’ve told Yes Man to seal Cass and Veronica inside the Lucky 38 if I’m not back in a week.  If you kill me, your only living family will die locked in a relic of Pre-War technology just like the rest of the Brotherhood.”  

My mouth went dry.  I hadn’t even considered Veronica.  I tried to play it off, but I know she realized she’d won this fight.  “My brother—”

“Your brother’s been dead for years, you really think anybody survives to cross the country?”

I felt my face sink back into a defeated scowl.  “I can’t signal the mainframe directly, but I should be able to reprogram this robot so it can respond to a high-frequency signal and reroute the power.”  And activate the Archimedes, if nessecary, but I didn’t say that aloud.  

I had to modify the Mr. Handy’s hardware a bit and attach an antenna so it could receive signals remotely, but the programming was effortless and even the modifications only took a few minutes.  In that time, Arcade followed us upstairs with the news that he’d, unsurprisingly, found nothing helpful in the desks except a bit of scrap metal.  He noticed me working and Lucia explained.  

“Oh, so you’ll be able to reroute the power if anything happens to the Dam, thus avoiding a major outage _and_ sending the power to Freeside.”

He was theorizing based on what she’d said last night and for once, Lucia’s perfect facade faltered.  “…Yes.”  She paused just long enough to arouse suspicion and I could tell it was only because he trusted her so completely.  I doubt he even realized that she’d had no real reason to bring him on this mission except to control me; he certainly didn’t seem to have caught her threatening his life.  Frankly, I was embarrassed for him, for how absolutely completely she’d deceived him thanks to his need to believe that someone was changing things for the better.  I think he was the only person where I wouldn’t have minded if he’d put that kind of faith in me.  Maybe I wouldn’t disappoint him quite as badly if he still couldn’t see all her flaws after everything she’d been doing.  

“…Okay.  That was… a less confident answer than I’d expected.  You _are_ planning to direct power to Freeside or the entire grid, right?  You’re not doing this so you can, say, activate the super weapon?”  And right when I thought she could never do anything to fracture his trust.  He might still follow her into the mouth of hell, but hey, at least he had the sense to recognize when even she was surprised he believed her.  Was he hopeful or worried?  I couldn’t decide.  As peaceful as the man could be, he still acted as, essentially, a bodyguard— he’d shot a lot of people— and he had as much reason to hate the NCR as I did.  He had to want the NCR out of this place, even if it wasn’t as personal as it was for me.  I finished programming the Handy as Lucia reassured him.  

She had Arcade convinced even before the robot reached the stairs.  It fixed the wire and seemed to shut down.  I felt Lucia’s gaze boring into my back.  “It’ll reactivate at the radio signal, don’t worry.  I didn’t think there was any sense in overriding its energy conservation protocol; besides, this way it’s less likely to run out of fuel while on standby.”  

Lucia narrowed her eyes, but accepted that.  She knew she’d cowed me by threatening Vero.  

The mainframe itself proved much more secure.  Hacking the system and setting up a program to transfer power on a time delay, as I planned, took me well over an hour and left Arcade and Lucia playing twenty questions with each other.  I couldn’t work while listening to every word they said, but I caught enough to be amused at how drastically the game emphasized their vast differences.  Both of them frequently stumped each other, even when Arcade tried to choose things Lucia would be able to guess, and then he got irritated and chose intentionally obscure subjects like George Washington and the Titanic.  Lucia finally got fed up and ended the game.  She pulled out one of the issues of the Milsurp Review that she always carried with her and started rereading it and he came over to sit beside me.  I cast an amused glance his way.  

“Sorry.  I can…um… go over there, I guess, if I’m distracting you.”

“You’re always distracting me,” I chuckled, “but I’m nearly done, and I can still focus enough to finish this.”  

He fell silent and let me work for a few more minutes.  When he spoke again, I could hear a frown in his tone.  “No offense, but I didn’t expect this to take hours.  What are you doing exactly?”  I raised an eyebrow and he cut off my sarcastic reply as soon as he heard the first syllable.  “I mean, I know you’re programming something, not just inputing a command, and you wouldn’t need to do that if you were just doing what the system was set up to do.”  

Behind him, Lucia perked up and I realized that he’d just clued her in to the fact that no, the system was not meant to do what I was doing with it.  

“I’m rerouting the power more efficiently,” I improvised, “a lot of the old grid is gone but the system is still trying to supply it, it’s also trying to power abandoned factories and places in Fiend territory.  I’m redefining the system’s regional maps so it can supply as much area as possible without wasting power on downed lines and empty buildings.  The `bot will be able to edit this as well, it’ll just be an interface, though I’ll have to be the one controlling it as I can only control its movements— the Handy doesn’t know how to use this terminal, the best I can do is allow myself remote access to its kinetic systems, overriding its standard programming to control its motions.  But I can’t transmit visual feeds by UHF signals, so I’ll need to rely on my memory of the code and terminal set-up.  I should be able to handle that easily enough, especially now, but no one else would be able to operate the Handy to adjust the system themselves and if anyone tried it would likely prevent my own efforts in the future.”

Lucia narrowed her eyes.  She probably didn’t understand a word of that and even more than she knew she had me by the metaphorical balls, she knew I was much smarter than her.  It was a little ironic, I suppose: when I’d been constantly in pain and suicidal, I knew I was smart, but I’d only been a little more intelligent than average and I couldn’t clearly remember more than half of what I’d learned.  Now my mind was slowly clearing and I found I could recall everything as vividly as if I was reliving the memory itself.  I’d expected to die, and I think she’d expected me to kill myself either now or once the Mojave was lost, but she’d left Arcade in the suite where she kept me prisoner and now I was becoming dangerous to her.  

Arcade understood enough of my explanation even if he didn’t get that the first part was a lie (I really could control the robot, and it would function exactly as I explained, but my program only set up a series of delayed commands so the Archimedes would activate and power would reroute without needing my input.)  The power grid itself automatically shut down any downed sections and adjusted for them.  “Wait,” he pondered, realizing the major flaw of my plan, “you’re saying you’ll be operating the robot _blindly_ and you’re certain you’ll be able to remember your programing and the terminal layout _and_ other factors like the position of the Handy relative to the terminal well enough to actually redirect power without _being able to see what you’re doing?_ ”

“Yes.”  Arcade wasn’t going to just trust me on that and Lucia seemed even more skeptical, so I admitted, “I have an eidetic memory.  It… it isn’t always a good thing.”

Lucia looked from me to Arcade, still completely lost while the doctor stared in amazement and sat back in his chair.  The courier sighed, “And what exactly does that mean?”

Arcade opened his mouth to explain and I summarized much more plainly, “It just means I can remember things very, very vividly.  _Much_ more vividly than is normal, to the point that I can picture, line for line, most of the programing I’ve ever done.  I will be able to operate this Handy and use it to redirect power even without seeing this room or the terminal.”  I could tell that Arcade was processing the full significance of this revelation.  My memory meant I could picture various events in my past as if they were flip-books burned into my mind.  He had to be wondering if this included my mother’s death.  It did.  

With the program already running and Helios One’s currently minimal power output redirected to the entire grid, I stood up.  “Well, we still have to align the array, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, in case it isn't quite clear and because it won't be brought up again for a while and it is pretty important: Max set a timer for the Archimedes I to kill the NCR around the plant; it's going to activate later on and he knows when. Arcade has no idea that he did this.


	12. Cipher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of talking and Max just trying to keep his friends alive.

*       *      *

There wasn’t too much that happened on the way back to the Strip.  I kept an eye on Max but he had little trouble keeping up with us, despite his feet.  I knew some of it had to be his own stubborn refusal to acknowledge pain, and I made sure we stopped to rest more often than usual, but traveling through the desert didn’t leave many options for him to rest.  We still made better time than I’d expected.  

Max’s good humor hadn’t really returned and he spent most of the walk staring off into the distance, lost in thought.  As far as I could tell, my diagnosis had been right and he was completely recovered, or at least he had been eating regularly with no signs of sickness and seemed much stronger and less in pain, so this wasn’t medical— unless it was just his way of dealing with the pain in his feet, which I doubted.  He seemed like he had something on his mind.  Something about Helios One must have brought this on, but a lot had happened in those two days.  Was he just bothered by his mother’s death and revisiting his hatred of the NCR?  Hopefully he might reconsider it, but nothing that had happened recently suggested he had reason to do so.  Maybe he was pondering some way to improve the power output or build a solar array somewhere else to power the other settlements of the Mojave.  More likely he was considering some way to reproduce or commandeer the super weapon for use against the NCR.  That’s what Moreno would have been thinking about if he had Max’s level of engineering skills.  

Or maybe he was just wondering about us.  I mean, we hadn’t really had a chance to talk since that night and Lucia hadn’t left us alone for more than a few minutes since then.  I hadn’t asked or really thought about it at the time because I hadn’t wanted to force him to discuss or decide when he was dealing with such painful memories.  Besides, whatever we’d decided, he would have remembered where that decision took place and good or bad, that would have been disturbing.  I wasn’t really sure where we stood either.  He was nineteen, and even setting his age aside, he’d been in pain most of his life and a dozen different factors probably left him psychologically damaged and screwed with his brain chemistry.  Most and maybe all of those would be getting back to normal now and he _would_ be returning to some more healthy mental state.  Even if he hadn’t been nineteen, neither of us had any way of knowing how much of his feelings were real and how much had been due to brain chemistry imbalances or even just a misguided form of gratitude for the fact that I’d happened to pick the right disease and alleviate his symptoms.  In any case, he certainly wasn’t in a rational state of mind and unless he could convince me otherwise, it just wasn’t ethical to have _any_ sort of romantic relationship with him.  Hell, the sex we’d _already had_ hadn’t been ethical.  

The night before we reached Vegas, we camped pretty much the same as we usually did.  I cooked and all of us talked about nothing in particular.  It wouldn’t have stood out at all except for one moment that stuck in my mind.  It was the way Max looked at Lucia one of the times she laughed.  We’d been chatting about how bad almost all wasteland food seemed to taste and Max made some joke that cracked her up.  I don’t even remember the joke, just that Lucia shut her eyes and had to catch her breath afterwards, and I chuckled, but when I glanced at Max, he had this absolutely chilling deadpan stare.  He’d feigned happiness with his usual smirk for most of the past few days, at least when we were talking, but for that instant, he let his face return to that haunted stare except that this time, whatever spark had reignited inside of him shown in his eyes.  The intensity of his gaze almost seemed incendiary; I just saw the cold, focused way he watched the courier and the laughter died in my throat.  This was the side of Max that seemed like he could do anything, the part of him who’d kept going by sheer force of will when pain and despair urged him to die, and he focused on Lucia with all the unyielding hatred he felt towards the NCR.  

And then she had opened her eyes and his smile was back, submissive, seductive, content as ever, and she had no idea the way he’d looked at her less than a second before.  I saw that moment in my nightmares for the next several weeks.  I couldn’t imagine what she might have done or what deranged reasoning might have provoked such loathing, but I knew beyond a doubt that Max was planning to kill her.  

*       *       *

I needed to get Veronica out of the Lucky 38 before I had any hope of dealing with Lucia.  I’d planned to warn Arcade on the way back to Vegas, but the courier must have realized that I was no longer the apathetic, suicidal man she’d tried to use.  She didn’t give me more than a single moment alone with him and I knew that once I told him, he’d have too many questions for me to explain that quickly.  If I had tried and she caught me, not only would it cement any desire she had to kill me, but he would likely ask her for the truth.  In all probability, we’d both wind up dead.  

I’d suspected that Lucia had installed security cameras in the suite after Arcade nearly shot me and a quick and subtle check of the rooms when we returned had confirmed my suspicion.  I couldn’t risk telling him in the suite and I couldn’t risk leaving, that would probably lead Lucia to believe I’d found outside help in which case she’d be even more driven to kill me.  I had to keep her thinking I was valuable enough to justify the threat I posed.  She wanted to control me; the more dangerous I seemed, the more she’d enjoy that as long as she didn’t realize I had the upper hand.  

I had to get Veronica out of here and I had an idea of how to do it.  My thoughts had continued to clear especially now that we were away from Helios One and my feet were on the mend; I knew I’d need to be careful and I had enough confidence in my intellect right now that I felt I could manage to get my point across safely.  Lucia might figure out a reference to literature or a cipher, but she didn’t know the history between Vero and I.  I might be able to use those memories to communicate.  Talking to her directly raised more suspicion than leaving a note in her stash of scrap beside my own chemistry supplies, and writing let me use the cipher we’d had as kids.  There wasn’t much to do in the bunker and there weren’t too many kids even then; neither of us had really fit in, so we’d been good friends.  We used a simple Caesar cipher with the writer’s age as a right shift, because we were children and more complex encryption lost our interest.  I kept the shift as it had been, adjusting to my current age.  It didn’t matter that the code itself might be easy to crack; I kept the message vague so hopefully only Vero would understand it.  

We got back to the suite late at night, so late that Arcade went straight to bed after Lucia closed herself in her room, and I’d figured out what I would say on the walk, so I stayed awake to write it.  

UTVD MH MAX UKBTKL- MAX VATBG MATM UBGWL

I hadn’t realized until I enciphered it that the nineteen-letter shift made the word “the” into my name, and it made me chuckle as I wrote it down.  If it came to it, I might be able to use a more complex cipher to warn Arcade, but I still worried that he’d confront Lucia directly, forcing the fight I sought to avoid.  With Vero, I used the same old code we’d had as kids and added a Brotherhood doctrine as my signature, hoping she’d understand.  When we’d passed coded notes as children, we took phrases from children’s books and fables.  For the most part, we adapted their meaning for our lives, but some were more tied to the story.  It was mostly stuff like codes for hide-and-seek and messing with the scribe’s notes and warnings about Knight Hardin looking for us, but I hoped she’d figure out what I meant.  We’d used the phrase “back to the briars” when we had to go find our parents so they would punish us and we’d avoid the harsher punishments imposed by our teachers or the knights and paladins.  Hopefully she’d take that as a warning to face the Brotherhood rather than something worse.  I’d chosen my signature to enforce the urgency.

The next morning, I knew she’d found the note when I emerged for breakfast and saw the stare she gave me when I entered the kitchen.  Arcade was there, but Lucia either hadn’t left her room or had gone out alone, so it was just Vero and Arcade at the table.  I dug a mutfruit out of the fridge as Vero wondered, “You left me a note?”

“Yes.”  I hadn’t started smiling yet, it was too early and my feet still hurt, but I didn’t grin as she asked; instead, I took on a very serious expression.  If I tried to pass it off as nothing, she might think I was joking or teasing her somehow, but if I acted serious maybe she’d realize what it meant.  

I think Vero had expected this to be a joke, or some innocent reminder of how we’d been practically best friends growing up.  When I looked at her like that, she took it seriously.  Arcade realized something was up and glanced back and forth between us for a few seconds before voicing his own question.  “Is there something going on?”

“It’s nothing.”  I set the fruit on the table and started moving a large amount of my more mechanically related supplies towards the far end of the table.  Arcade and Veronica both watched in confusion and I explained simply, “I want to put up my feet and figured I’d be more out of the way back there than at this end of the table.”  Never mind that the back end of the table was a blindspot for Lucia’s cameras.  

 Veronica took my explanation at face value, but Arcade asked.  “And what exactly are you planning to do with…” he gestured at the wide range of scrap electrical and metallic components and tools, “…this?”

“Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that.”

Arcade must have figured that whatever I was building was somehow tied to the note I’d left for Veronica, because he watched in silent contemplation as I set up my work station and breakfast.  Veronica, on the other hand, frowned.  She thought over what I’d said for maybe a minute and remarked, “I thought you gave that up?”

“I may have to reconsider.”  I expected her to leave right then if she understood me, but instead she sat back down across from Arcade.  Speaking covertly was difficult, especially when I couldn’t risk letting Arcade know what we were saying; I took Veronica’s last question to mean that she thought I’d given up my rank in the Brotherhood, and I had.  I hadn’t planned to return and I didn’t really want to, but if Lucia actively tried to kill me— assuming I survived the attempt— I may need to return to the Brotherhood in order to survive.  And if I did, I’d still hold some sway over them, even if I wasn’t a paladin or an elder, I’d at least outrank Veronica.  With both of us outside the Brotherhood now, I figured she’d catch my drift and take the note as an order when I signed it “The Chain that Binds.”

*       *      *

Even after I gave up trying to determine what Max intended to build, I found myself staring at him.  For nearly a week I’d seen more and more of his serious side and today he’d been serious since he woke up.  He’d slept in, but he wasn’t sad; he had an edge to him, like there was some urgency to his work and that made him more serious, even if I did see a brief, genuinely playful smile when he’d dodged my questions.  It had been nice to see some honest happiness from the man, but that wasn’t so captivating as his… intensity.  

I’d seen it at Helios One, masked by pain and fear, but now he was calm and his feet had healed enough that I guess they didn’t bother him.  Just the way he talked to Veronica had some regal tone to it; right now, coupled with his very severe brow, the guy looked and sounded like a general.  The fact that he wore a very dapper suit rather than his raider gear or stripper uniform added to this.  I’d figured out how he could live without pain and now he’d… he’d metamorphosed.  

It didn’t help that I had a real weakness for generals, princes, knights and that sort of thing— he’d just been this stunningly attractive kid desperate for my help, and then he’d started acting more… well, more like this.  I think that was what had really gotten me interested in him aside from his body; even before, there had been those fleeting moments when he seemed absolutely in his element like nothing, come hell or high water, could stop him.  Now it was all the time.  His baritone just took on this quality I’d only heard from generals and military commanders— not that I had much experience with any other position of authority.  The man was a leader, even if he hadn’t seemed like it until now, even if he’d been so beaten down by pain and sickness… and if people really _had_ pressured him his entire life, what would have happened if he’d been born healthy?  Somehow I got the sense that the whole Mojave would have turned out very different.  

Now I guess he was trying to make up for that.  I didn’t remember when he’d come to bed last night and he hadn’t woken me up; he must have been up late, maybe writing this note for Veronica, maybe working on one of his secret projects.  I didn’t expect him to have been with Lucia because I’d seen her alive and well when she left her room this morning before retreating with breakfast.  I didn’t know why he wanted her dead.  Maybe it was his grudge against the NCR, maybe he was just power-hungry.  I didn’t want to believe the latter, so I assumed the former.  He hadn’t activated the Archimedes and Lucia had Yes Man guarding the controls for the Helios maintenance droid, so he couldn’t activate it now without her permission.  I trusted that she had done this sufficiently well and with how much Max hated the NCR, I didn’t expect him to have passed up the opportunity while we’d been there, Moreno certainly wouldn’t have let that go, so I took comfort in the fact that, however he felt towards the courier, at least Max had enough morality to leave the super-weapon alone.  

As long as he didn’t actually kill anyone, I didn’t feel so bad that his charm kept taking me in.  He made it really difficult to keep the promise I’d made to myself— and broken, and remade— not to get involved with him.  Even now that I knew how young he was, he just… he didn’t act it.  He’d probably endured more than half the men I’d dated in the past and he had this… this force of will like he could build a nation.  And watching him work, he was probably a genius.  

Max stared at each circuit and screw like his gaze could weld them; I could practically see his mind planning out a blueprint for whatever he was making.  He frowned habitually when he worked and the expression really added to the sense that he was a very important, very busy man.  Even when the device he focused so intently upon soon turned out to be a holotape projector.  Which he built from scrap that had most certainly never been a projector in the past.  The man was brilliant.  

I couldn’t decide if I was more amazed by the result because I’d seen what he’d started with, or because he hadn’t built a weapon.  The way he worked so quickly and so serious, it had seemed like he was preparing for war or some similarly drastic, desperate move, and here he’d just made a source of entertainment that hadn’t been readily available in hundreds of years.  

Veronica had been watching Max almost as intently as I had— although for obviously different reasons— and when he finally closed the chassis and set it aside, she gave him a curious look.  “…you’re starting to remind me of your father.”

Max laughed, “I know.  It’s a little concerning, isn’t it?”  He glanced up and ate some of his mutfruit.  “Don’t worry: I won’t start sleeping with everyone who’ll have me.”

We both stared at him.  “Aren’t you already doing that?”

“Well…” Max looked shrugged evasively, “I’m planning to stop.”

I couldn’t resist being devil’s advocate.  “How soon, exactly?”  Veronica gave me a look and I backpedaled, misinterpreting it, “Not that I’m… interested, or anything.”

Max chuckled and then got more serious.  He shrugged again.  “As soon as possible?”

What the hell did that mean?  “There’s… resistance to that?”  Veronica stared at me.  “ _I’m_ not resisting this!”

Lucia strode into the kitchen at that point, seeking lunch.  Max’s expression lost even the last trace of good humor for the barest instant before she turned towards him and his eerily convincing fake smirk returned.  “Good morning, Lucia.”  Looking back towards the courier, I realized that Veronica must have caught that death-glare, because she suddenly seemed pensive.  

“Hey, Lucia.”  

The courier picked up on my nervous tone, but must have just figured she’d walked in on an awkward conversation.  It wouldn’t be completely unexpected that Max might have brought up his sex life to deter Veronica from some line of questioning, although he hadn’t seemed interested in distracting anyone with sex lately.  “Hey, Arcade.”  Lucia turned towards Max and her eyes scanned over the scrap and the finished holotape player in front of him.  She beamed, “Morning, Max, I’m glad you’ve taken to heart our little discussion.”  

His left eyebrow twitched ever so slightly and if they hadn’t been separated by so much of the table, I would have expected a murder.  “Yeah, I did.”  He had such a level of cold acrimony in his voice that I had to wonder what they’d talked about.  It seemed like a lot of emotion if she’d just asked him to make a holotape player.  I frowned at each of them as they maintained silent eye contact for a full minute.  It was like two feral dogs, sizing each other up.  

Veronica gathered the remains of the breakfast she’d finished hours ago and stood up, breaking the tension.  “Well, I’m going to go check if Mick and Ralph have finally gotten any nice dresses…”  She paused for a second as Lucia turned that aggressive smile towards her, “You want to come with?”

Whatever was going on with her and Max, Lucia relaxed.  She grinned at Veronica, back to her usual self.  “No, thanks.  You have fun, I’ve got a lot to do around here today.”  She turned back and gave Max one long stare which, as he’d already gone back to tinkering with bits of scrap electronics and wire, he didn’t even see.  Lucia huffed silently and stormed out.  I heard her take the elevator upstairs after Veronica left.  

I found myself watching Max again after she was gone.  At first, I was pondering that baffling exchange between him and Lucia.  Obviously, he was the one who’d started this, so maybe she’d somehow convinced him that he owed her, so he needed to do what he could to help.  From what I’d seen, he couldn’t really defend himself in the wasteland, so he needed somebody looking out for him and she had let him stay here, so it made sense, even if Lucia wasn’t really the type to insist upon a quid-pro-quo.  She helped everyone for free, but I guess Max had been a bit prickly towards her.  Or maybe she was just pissed off that he’d slept with me, if they really had had some kind of relationship.  Even if she’d just been interested in him, that could be bothering her.  Although, if that was the case, it seemed a little odd that she hadn’t even been annoyed with me.  She still acted as friendly as ever, and if I’d basically slept with her boyfriend… even if she realized that I had never really known whether or not they were a couple, it didn’t quite make sense that she’d just let me off the hook completely.  

But that was all speculation, so soon I was just wondering what he was building and then that progressed and before long I found myself fantasizing about who he was becoming and how things might have been if he hadn’t been sick and if he was maybe five years older.  Who was I kidding; if Max had always been like this, he’d be running something important and if we’d ever even met, he wouldn’t have given me a second glance.  Hell, if he hadn’t been sick, for all I know he might have rebuilt the Enclave, hopefully as something at least a little better than what it was.  The idea entertained me more than I cared to realize and I had to admit that if he had really done that I would have followed him into anything.  

I hadn’t realized Max was looking at me until he made a show of licking mutfruit juice of his fingers as he finished his breakfast.  I turned away blushing.  Damn it, Arcade, he was _nineteen_.  I wasn’t getting involved with a nineteen-year-old… or at least, not again.  That was stopping.  That was stopping _right_ _now_.  

Max chuckled.  “Come on, we’re not at Helios One anymore…”  He trailed off when I just frowned into the bowl of dry cereal I’d forgotten about hours ago.  

*       *      *

“What is it?” My first worry was that he might have continued with sex at the time, but had now deciphered my cryptic explanation about who I was.  If he realized I was Brotherhood, at the very least, it would be bad.  That was an understatement.  I trusted that he’d be able to forgive me for that, considering he was in a similar position, but if he figured out who I was there was still that chance he might shoot me.  

“You’re… a lot younger than I’d realized.” he admitted.  

This couldn’t be it.  I shook my head in disbelief, “Arcade, yes, I’m nineteen, but I’ve _been in battle_.  I’m not some innocent child, I’m generally smarter than most people I’ve ever met, I’ve had to kill people, I’ve lived mostly on my own for six years and I’ve gotten by, I’m not some coddled teenager.  Hell, I’ve probably had more sex than all the courier’s friends _combined_.”  I’d listed the traits most people seemed to associate with maturity and when I saw how much everything I’d said had bothered him, I thought more about who I was dealing with.  “Arcade,” I sighed, “I’ve made mistakes and I regret them.  I’ve probably had to deal with the consequences of my actions more than a lot of people my age, and I’ve lived in the wasteland.  Nineteen on your own in a world like this isn’t the same as nineteen in a bunker or a base or a vault.  I can’t say I know when you ended up out in the world, but personally I’ve had a lot of time to adapt so I may only be nineteen, but I’m pretty damn sure I qualify as an adult.”  

I’d never cared about differences in age.  I read old books and had watched holotapes where that was a big deal, but it didn’t matter any more.  Age difference only really mattered when it came to women having kids and as we were both guys that didn’t come into it.  The archaic generation gaps weren’t relevant if they even still existed; Arcade and I had lived more similar lives than the vast majority of men our own ages.  I didn’t have a way to research the disease I had, but for a lot of reasons, I didn’t expect that I would have the same life expectancy as the average person, so age didn’t matter if he was afraid he’d die long before me.  He didn’t look old and I didn’t look too young, so that wasn’t the reason either.  It had to be due to life experience and the wasteland never really changed.  

*       *       *

That argument nearly convinced me.  He looked about thirty, and he made points I’d been trying not to make to myself, despite what he’d admitted initially.  He must have been on his own since his mother died, I guess that had done even more to ensure that he grew up fast.  But he was still in the process of returning to some more normal mental state, even if his disease and alcohol, and probably drug use, hadn’t screwed with his emotions, bouncing back from chronic pain could lead him to pursue me romantically when he was really only grateful that I’d helped him.  And I didn’t really know what he was like when he wasn’t sick, this Max was practically a new man, and a new man I’d only known for a few days.  I had no idea how much he might have changed.  

Max sighed and went back to his work.  After a while, I guess the silence became stifling and he asked me, “Where’d that soldier guy run off to?  Not that I’m not glad he’s gone, he’d probably have shot me, but it seems a little sudden.”

“Boone?”  I thought back and he was right, it had seemed a bit odd.  The sniper never really opened up to anyone and I think I’d been a little too pushy when Lucia’s exploits often left us as each other’s only company.  Cass had been worse when she’d been there instead of me.  He had just seemed like someone who needed a friend, and I admit I’d had a slight crush on him, but he’d sort of caught me on the rebound from… well, from a very abruptly ended relationship.  I shrugged, “We— er— weren’t the most welcoming.  I think he liked to keep to himself and you know how nosy most of us can be.”

Max raised an eyebrow, grinning up at me despite the fact that he was in the process of wrapping uninsulated copper wire around a metal rod.  I had no idea if it was live or not, but knowing him, it might have been.  “You?” he chuckled, “Knowing you, I’m surprised the guy had any secrets left by the time he went away.”  I had no idea if that was sarcasm or not, considering I’d been unexpectedly successful at getting Max to open up; nobody else responded to my questions, although admittedly I’d never thought Boone’s life was on the line.  Max had upped the ante.  

“Interrogation: just another area in which I excel.”  I added more seriously, “But you’re right, it was fairly abrupt.”  I watched him connect that rod to a bit of circuitry and he began wrapping a second rod.  “You are at least taking _some_ safety precautions, right?”

“Some.”  Max grazed the wire with his bare thumb rather than the insulated pliers he’d been using.  Sparks flew and he recoiled with a curse and a burn.  

I narrowed my eyes.  “I feel so reassured.”

“I haven’t electrocuted myself yet.”

“But clearly not for lack of trying.”

He laughed and examined the burn.  “Relax, it’s just a low voltage system right now.  I haven’t hooked up the main power supply yet.”  

I sighed and examined the amalgamation of wires and circuitry in front of him.  “What exactly is it, or are you not going to tell me?”

“It’s a terminal,” Max explained, “Or it will be, eventually.  Mostly, I’m hoping to record some holotapes just to jot some information down and otherwise keep notes in a way that is a bit more condensed and more clear than physical note-taking, especially with my hand-writing.”  

“Apparently Veronica could read your handwriting.”

“Veronica’s been reading my handwriting for years,” he replied, avoiding my real question.  For the first time in a while, he decided to try and distract me.  This time I let him.  If he’d told Veronica something and didn’t want me to know, either it was innocent or it involved their past.  If he refused to tell me, for all I knew, he might have just been asking her for relationship advice; she was practically his older sister and knowing Veronica, she wouldn’t be involved in anything too dangerous or unethical.  

“Speaking of notes, have you got notes of your research for the Followers?  Can I see them?”  Sometimes his redirections were about as subtle as a baseball home run, but this was less drastic by comparison.  

“Yeah, I have notes.  I actually have them in my bag just in case, by some miracle, I have some inspiration.  In case you’re wondering, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.  If you really want to look at them…”

He nodded.  I brought him the hundred or so pages of notes— which mostly consisted of different plant species followed by the words “no medicinal properties” or occasionally “toxic.”  “You know, there are less pointless ways to distract me.”

“Like sex?”  He laughed at my expression, but he relented.  He set aside the terminal-in-progress and paged through my notes.  “I want to help you.  Two heads are better than one, and all that.  Besides, I owe you.”

“For diagnosing you?  You don’t owe me, I just made a lucky guess.”  

“It was more than that,” Max insisted.  I gave him a skeptical look and his brow creased, taking on that stunningly regal expression.  The guy looked like he should be leading an army and he’d wound up hiding in this gloomy old suite.  “Guess or not, it was at the very least an educated guess.  We _both_ know if you hadn’t suggested I stop eating grain, I’d be dead.”

He said that so bluntly, as always, though at least this time he spared me that sad smile.  I’m not sure if I fell silent because I knew he was right or because the thought of him lying dead by his own hand brought back a lot of bad memories.  Maybe that was why I’d felt so drawn to Max in the first place.  

He kept his serious demeanor.  “I know I put a lot on you earlier, and I hope you can tell that I’m more… I’m okay now.  I know that bothered you and I’m not going to guess if there was a specific reason or if that was just how incredibly compassionate you tend to be; I’m sorry.  I’m not going to obfuscate anything I tried to do— and I’m pretty sure you realize the full extent of that— but I put a lot on you before we really knew much about each other and I didn’t mean to, I just…  I was pretty desperate.  You’ve really done a lot for me, and I want to repay that.  Maybe I can notice something you haven’t discovered yet; it’s worth a try, right?”

“…yeah.”  He hadn’t let me get a word in during that entire explanation and for a moment, I was speechless.  “You seemed like you needed someone; I realized that after… well, after you kind of freaked me out.”

He laughed uncomfortably.  “Yeah, that was really… really low.  I’m sorry.”

I didn’t really want to believe it, but I had to ask in the hope that I was wrong.  “Were you trying…?  You tried to provoke me to kill you, didn’t you?”

Max got very quiet and stared down at my notes.  For a while, I didn’t expect him to answer, and then he cleared his throat and I realized he’d gotten choked up.  He met my gaze and answered flatly.  “Yes.”  His eyes flicked back to the notes and he paged through them probably just to do something.  “I know that was a really terrible thing to try, and I realize I should never have manipulated anyone like that, and I sort of thought you figured it out a while ago, but like I said, I really wasn’t in a good place at the time— and alcohol being a depressant and all that— and I never plan to try _that_ again, and…”  He grimaced and dared to look back up at me.  “I’m really sorry.”

“You were desperate,” I muttered, though I’m sure we both knew it still bothered me much more than I wanted to show.  I went back to the breakfast I kept forgetting, not really tasting it and staring at the table rather than meeting Max’s gaze.  I didn’t realize he was trying to decipher the subtleties of my reaction until he voiced them.  

“You have some history with this.”  I frowned at him and Max clarified, “You don’t have to talk about it, I just hadn’t realized: you have some reason that suicide, or just depression, bothers you particularly deeply.  I didn’t know.”  He added before I could really respond, “If you want to talk, I’m here.  I mean, you seem like you just internalize this kind of thing and keep your secrets, but you don’t really seem like you have anyone you can talk to around here, so if you need someone, even if you don’t want to talk, I’m here.”  Now I was just speechless again and he must have seen that.  He waved his hand in something between a shrug and a dismissal and pointed out, “You were here for me— more than _anyone_ has been.”

“Thanks.”  

He nodded and when I awkwardly returned to my very delayed breakfast, he went back to reading. 


	13. A Breakthrough

We didn’t really leave the kitchen that day and for the next two days we spent most of our time there as well.  Lucia didn’t show up and neither did anyone else.  Rex had been returned to the King after Max arrived, Raul hadn’t left his shack lately, so I guess Lucia had him working on something, and Lily had been less and less coherent.  Max told me Lucia didn’t want him making the mutant’s medicine anymore, so I hoped she’d returned to Doc Henry because that would be the best possible reason for that request and her absence.  Likewise, I hoped Cass was trying to rebuild her family’s caravan business rather than languishing in a bar now that the Van Graffs and the Crimson Caravan had both been destroyed.  For a while, I’d wondered if Cass had done that herself, but I doubted that even Cass could have handled the kind of guards they employed.  Even if Lucia had helped, there was no way they could have managed it.  Veronica hadn’t been back, but the courier knew where she had gone, so I just figured she and Lucia had gone off on some emergency mission.  The Legion had been getting more active lately and the NCR had more than enough on their hands; Lucia always had something urgent to take care of.  Our only company in the suite was that eyebot.  

While we were left alone, Max perused my notes and I brought in a book to read over anything botanical and make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything.  When the silence dragged on, we’d talk, even though neither of us really minded being left to his work.  For once, I really enjoyed talking to someone.  It was usually one of my biggest pet peeves when people felt compelled to talk while I was trying to read, but Max made interesting conversation.  He was well-read, and he’d grown up watching a lot of the same holotapes that I had— both facts reaffirmed my belief that he’d been born in the Enclave.  We both liked old musicals in particular.  We briefly talked about watching them together on the projector he’d built before that conversation faded and we went back to reading in silence.  Every so often, he’d mention a plant I’d written about and usually we’d discuss the possibilities for a while before concluding it wasn’t feasible to use it medicinally.  Xander root was the exception.  It showed some promising results, but didn’t react potently enough on its own and neither of us had thought of anything that might help it along.  After that dead end, he had stopped to eat dinner out of frustration, but I fully expected this new, adamant Max to work day and night until he succeeded.  And he did stay up so late that I wasn’t really sure if he slept the first night.  

The next evening, I heard a clunk while reading my botany text and realized he’d dozed off.  I moved him to the bed and went to sleep as well in the hope that maybe a good night’s rest would give me some new insight.  

The following morning, he’d awakened before me.  I found him in the kitchen, on his feet, my notes left at the head of the table while he stood over the counter with electronics scattered in front of him.  I got myself cereal— the selection of food wasn’t great, and as far as breakfast went my options were cereal or fruit.  I didn’t really look at what Max was working on until I was at the table standing across from him and I dropped the bowl of cereal in shock (luckily it landed upright.)  

“Max!  What are you doing?!  Get _away_ from that thing!”

“Relax, it’s deactivated.”  He looked up with one hand on the opened eyebot and tweaked a sensor near its weapons’ systems before admitting, “Mostly.”  

I was practically beside myself.  “Mostly?!”  I could hear my voice getting embarrassingly high, but I didn’t care.  “Max, do you have any idea what these things do?  You’re poking around in its circuitry— even if you don’t touch the wrong wire or anything, it’s _still_ likely to go berserk!”

“No, it’s not.”  He sighed irritably and finished up what he was doing.  “Arcade, I know you don’t trust this thing, but I’ve been programming robots and turrets for most of my life.  I’ve checked damn near all the code in this thing for hidden algorithms and it’s not going berserk unless I want it to.”  He tapped his pliers on the table beside a very jury-rigged holotape.  “By the way, I found that; it turns out our friend ED-E had some rather helpful information inside of him.”

I raised an eyebrow.  “It was carrying a holotape?”

“No.”  Max plugged some wires into their sockets and the little robot whirred back to life.  Max closed the chassis and explained, “I built the tape.”  He nodded at the finished terminal he’d constructed and set up on the table near the notes.  “I found some files stored on his hard drive and recorded them to that holotape.  I’ve already reviewed them, but you might want to do the same.”

“Why?”  I kept one hand on the plasma defender at my hip, just in case that hovering robot got its bearings and decided it preferred these files kept secret.  It beeped something and Max gave it an odd look.  “I really hope that isn’t a warning beep.”

Max snorted.  “Someone gave ED-E a much more advanced AI than usual for eyebots.  He seems to have some amount of simulated emotions, which is why I disabled his internal sensors while I worked on him.  Might be because whoever programmed him wanted him to make it all this way; you should check the tape.”  

I plugged the holotape into the terminal and played it.  There were audio files but also technical information— dramatically more than I expected to fit on a single, jury-rigged holotape.  It was Enclave information.  I stared at Max and found him smiling his bittersweet smile rather than his fake smirk or a more playful grin.  Why was he sad about this?  “This _is_ good news, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”  Max ignored the duraframe eyebot’s confused beeping.  I could tell my friend wasn’t lying.  

“What is it?”

I knew he wasn’t going to tell me as soon as he waved his hand.  “It’s a lot of things.”  I wanted to believe it wasn’t serious and he was just frustrated with the futility of trying to create medical supplies from local plants or maybe just frustrated with the NCR’s power in the area, but given his history of depression, it made me worry.  

“You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine!” Max snapped.  He paced for a moment and then gestured to the notes.  “Sorry.  I’ve got nothing; I’ve never been the best botanist, most of my synthesis of chems and vitamins involves inorganic compounds or animal matter— mostly bone and meat.  Plants were never my specialty.”

“Sorry, like I said, this research is kind of pointless.”  I got up to gather my notes and put them away, but he stopped me.  

“No.  I may not be the best botanist, but I still want to help you with this, I just needed a break.”  He practically scrambled to stow the scrap, tools, and terminal in the crate he’d claimed for his things.  “I get sort of… obsessive about things, and when I couldn’t figure this out, it just…”  He gestured wildly.  “I kept thinking through it over and over and I just had to stop and work on something else for a while.  I feel like I’m—”  He paced and ran a hand through his already wild hair— he looked like he had showered but never combed it.  “Like I’m being pulled in a million different directions; I have all these things I want to make, or modify, or get done, and nowhere near enough time.  I’ve never felt like this before.”  

That was probably an understatement; he’d been so apathetic he could barely get out of bed a few weeks ago, and now he had something bordering on anxiety.  “You didn’t feel like this before?  Were you… well, were you taking anything when you were in pain?”

He let out his breath in something that wasn’t quite a laugh, “I’ve taken over a dozen different things to keep me going, I know this could be my body rebounding from that, or from having been sick for so long, and it doesn’t help that the war actually makes everything feel so… urgent.”  He grabbed an apple from the fridge and ate it as he paced.  

He was right; I’d considered the same thing.  This could be the natural response until his body realized it no longer needed to counteract pain, or whatever he’d been taking for that pain, or this could be how he’d adapted to the fact that chronic pain made it much more difficult to focus.  It could also be that he would have been this energetic under normal circumstances and pain had sapped his energy and focus.  Having been in pain as long as he had had almost certainly made him depressed and even if that was cured it could also cause anxiety and that might be what I was seeing now.  His brain would have lost some ability to process multiple tasks at the same time due to damage from his pain, so he might not really have all that much to do— two or three tasks could have seemed impossibly daunting to him right now, but with how capable he seemed, I liked to think that wasn’t the case.  

He finished his apple, pacing and frowning all the while.  He’d washed his hands and started back towards my notes when I asked him quietly, “Is this who you are when you aren’t in pain?”

He turned that thoughtful frown towards me and I suppressed a shiver.  He really looked much older than he was and that spark inside him could be absolutely dazzling.  “I really don’t know,” Max admitted.  Before the mood could become too dark, he smiled and added, “To tell the truth, I’m not even sure who I want to be, but I’m enjoying the chance to figure that out.”  

It seemed a little too close to flirting to admit that I was glad to watch him figure that out.  He sat down and paged through my notes while I ate my cereal and considered what he’d said.  Whoever he turned out to be, I couldn’t imagine him becoming anything but amazing.  This was a man who could shape the Mojave at least as easily as the courier could, and I didn’t dare admit how large a part I had played in saving him— it seemed just a little too egotistical to think a guy like that might owe his life to me.  

I’d been trying very hard to keep things platonic between us now that I knew how young he was and after the first few sexual comments, Max actually seemed to have backed off.  I don’t think he was open to anyone except myself and Veronica, so I understood that he wanted us to stay close friends; so far it seemed like he was finally willing to leave it at that.  I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t get involved with him (again) but I couldn’t quite manage to be happy that he seemed to agree.  

Max got frustrated with the notes while I was still eating breakfast.  He got up and started pacing so, in an effort to distract him, I brought up the first topic that came to mind.  Failed pre-war socioeconomic policies.  The conversation actually held his interest; he was the first person who didn’t grimace at the very idea of discussing that— which was the reaction I’d expected.  Luckily, Max replied before I had the chance to backpedal.  I think his frustration drove him to complain; he criticized the cut-throat nature of Vegas and how it had become dangerously focused on greed.  We ended up imagining a communist society— with myself and him playing devil’s advocate to each other.  The problem with communism was the people in charge, who typically succumbed to greed, as I pointed out, and that was where I expected the discussion to end until Max suggested, not a human leader, but an automated system.  

As I found more and more often with Max and his wonderful ideas, he left me speechless for a moment.  “…with repair drones, and a very carefully programmed AI— and a lot of back-up systems and a whole lot of luck— that _could_ theoretically work.”  He nodded, his brow set especially low over his eyes.  I could practically see him forming a plan, so I asked in surprise, “Do you actually have the means to make that happen?”

He waved dismissively and his fake grin returned.  “It’s just a pipe dream.  Maybe some day…”  He was half lying.  He set this up like an abstract, but he really had an _actual_ plan to implement a computer-run communist government somewhere in the not-so distant future.  And I had no doubt that, Max being Max, he really could pull it off.  I stared at him in something between shock and admiration.  

Max must have realized I saw through his lie, but for some reason he deflected rather than admit it.  He shuffled through my notes.  “Xander root was the only promising specimen, so that might work if we can use something else as a promoter.  Mutfruit showed some interesting reactions with Xander root, but that’s probably an enzyme— I haven’t analyzed it myself and you didn’t research mutfruit yet, so that can be a back-up, but the Legion have this stuff called healing powder and it’s derived from Xander root, Xander root and some kind of flower.”

Now I stared for a whole different reason.  “Max, how exactly do you know Legion— and I use the term loosely— medicine?” 

“Long story,” he evaded.  He passed the notes on Xander root and several dozen flower species towards me and added, “I’m not supporting the Legion.  I just met some… some dangerous people at the Gomorra.  One of them mentioned healing power when he saved my life.”  I wasn’t convinced until he tapped his bracer and I realized why his life had needed saving.  If some legionary saved his life in that place, it was probably a frumentarius, and he’d probably only saved Max because Max dealt in secrets.  _Had_ dealt in secrets, he didn’t anymore.  And if he’d been saved by a frumentarius, I tried not to think that it was probably the only one I’d ever knowingly seen on the Strip.  

I paged through the notes and tried to distract myself while Max strode back over to his scrap and started building something that looked like a small radio transmitter.  Looking through the tattered papers, I realized his attempt to dodge my earlier questions had actually put me on the right track; I hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but Broc flowers contained a chemical which might well promote the reaction Xander root produced in the human body.  In theory— and in the right amounts— that combination could be used to synthesize stimpaks.  For the third time in a matter of minutes, my gaze locked on Max, this time with something bordering on awe.  He turned towards me to carry an armful of scrap and wire to the table and raised an eyebrow.  “…yes?”

I had to be sure.  I rummaged through the notes and then dug through the cabinet where Lucia left any interesting plants she found— she knew what I was researching and let me help myself to them, but I usually didn’t and I think she just enjoyed looking for them during her weeks of hiking.  Sure enough, I found Broc flowers and after some digging a Xander root as well.  Max settled down at the table and watched me while he worked.  For the first time today, he seemed almost relaxed.  

*       *       *

I’d decided that I just needed to accept that Arcade was too bothered by my age to continue anything sexual with me.  I _wanted_ him to be interested, which had to be why I kept seeing that when I tried to judge what he was feeling.  I still hadn’t decided exactly how I felt about him aside from grateful and that was one of the many reasons I’d been so distracted today.  I’d gotten Veronica out of Lucia’s reach, I hoped, but the courier had been gone for days and that worried me.  She could just be assisting the NCR or someone else, but I couldn’t quite determine if she had enough cunning to work against me yet, or what she’d do if she tried.  In her absence, I’d endeavored to use anything I could to set up my own defenses— that was why I’d opened up ED-E.  I’d been afraid the robot might have some hidden command so she could sic him on me if it came to a fight.  Instead, I’d found a massive amount of Enclave records and schematics for everything from military tech to hydroponics and medicine.  With the terminal shut down, as it was now, it would need a password to be accessed and I didn’t expect Lucia to be able to figure that out, so the data was safe.  I’d set up my own algorithms in case I needed the eyebot to protect me and I’d not only improved his lasers but reinforced his armor as well.  I’d helped Arcade’s research in an effort to repay him, but I hadn’t really expected to be able to really achieve anything and even all the effort I’d made to repay him, to protect him and Veronica, and to make sure the NCR didn’t take the Mojave didn’t feel like enough.  I wasn’t sure anything I could do would ever be enough.  

“The composition’s almost identical!” Arcade murmured to himself, “Aside from some impurities, but I can’t really help that without more advanced technology, and it’s nothing harmful…”  I’d turned around to watch him while the radio broadcast system cooled down where I had welded it and I hadn’t gone back to work even now that it was cold.  I’d been so agitated all day because I had so much to get done and nowhere near enough time, but watching Arcade when he was so clearly ecstatic about his discovery just made me smile.  For one thing, the ability to create stimpaks from such common resources would be a huge asset if I was ever going to run the Mojave independently— or even as some bastard (literally) off-shoot of the Brotherhood— but I found myself much more glad about how happy it made him.  

He turned around and I must have been smiling at him.  “It must be what they used to use to make stimpaks,” Arcade explained, “Xander root and Broc flower, or maybe whatever they mutated from.”  He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it adorably ruffled, “I wouldn’t have figured this out if you hadn’t mentioned…”

I chuckled and got up to hide the finished radio with the vodka I hadn’t touched in weeks.  “I wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t helped me.”  He’d been behind me when I said that, but he hugged me and I turned around to hug him back.  

He ended the hug after a long moment, but still held me at arm’s length like he wanted to say something and couldn’t find the words.  I chuckled a bit dryly, “I’d kiss you, but I don’t think you’d appreciate that.”

Arcade looked confused.  “You, um… That’s not exactly true…”

Now I was surprised.  “I thought my age was too much of a problem for you?”

*        *         *

It was a problem, but I’d rationalized it.  Whatever his age, he was an adult and we had too much in common for me to pretend his age was a deal-breaker.  I tried not to date men more than ten years younger than I was, but five years beyond that… I guess I could make an exception.  Hell, I’d already slept with him once, as much as I didn’t like to use that kind of justification.  

The elevator arrived before I could reply, but I’m pretty sure Max knew what I was going to say.  When the doors opened, I was afraid it would be Lucia, who would either drag us off on another mission or be murdered by Max, for whatever reason he’d come up with.  The sound of the elevator arriving reminded me how much he hated her.  I couldn’t imagine anything she might have done to even come close to deserving the level of pain he wanted to cause her—and  that proved a much greater obstacle to our relationship now that I remembered it.  I just found it difficult to know he had that much hate inside of him when he was helping me create stimpaks from common plants and talking about making a communist government feasible; it was the same way I had trouble reconciling the innocent girl Lucia was with the number of people she killed.  

But it wasn’t Lucia who arrived; it was Cass.  Already drunk and having just been kicked out of the Wrangler, of all places, she would have tried to incite a party— or at least a bender— under normal circumstances.  This time, however she caught on to the mood and grinned.  “You open to a threesome today?”

“No!”  I answered immediately and Cass laughed.  I couldn’t tell if Max’s chuckle meant he was amused by how quickly I’d refused or if he was really entertained by the idea.  He didn’t clarify.  Instead, he suggested poker— Cass had forgotten the last time they’d played poker and Max planned to lose on purpose.  I still wasn’t one for gambling, but Max, by some miracle, convinced Cass to keep the betting low and we both knew if we didn’t distract her, she’d continue trying to talk us into sex.  In terms of distractions, Cass had drink, sex, and gambling.  I certainly wasn’t going to sleep with her and whether or not he entertained the possibility, I really preferred if Max didn’t, and getting the already drunk woman even more drunk was even less appealing than losing around a hundred caps in a game.  

As it turned out, Cass still drank.  She had a bottle of whiskey, but at least the game forced her to use two hands on occasion, so she didn’t drink as heavily as she might have.  To my chagrin, Max _also_ drank, though far less heavily.  He brought out one of his bottles of vodka— presumably a brand made purely from potato, considering he didn’t have a reaction to it— and had a few sips as we played.  He was far from drunk when Cass fell asleep at the table.  

Max sighed after she slumped onto her pile of caps.  He gathered the cards together and set the deck aside, leaving everyone’s winnings where they were, including his own.  He grabbed for his vodka and now that the caravaner couldn’t protest I caught Max’s wrist.  “You should really stop drinking.”

Max stood and slipped his hand out of my grasp.  He took another small sip.  “I’m nowhere near as drunk as she was.  Besides, you didn’t stop Cass.”

“I’m not sure anything short of _death_ would stop Cass… and I haven’t been trying lately.  I’ve been focused on you.”

He snorted and walked past me to the fridge.  “I certainly do have enough problems.  I’m not even sure I can handle my _remaining_ problems right now.”  He took another drink as he grabbed a squirrel kabob from the fridge and caught my concern as he turned back towards the table.  “I’m not _suicidal_ ,” he assured me, but added under his breath, “At least not right now.”

I got up and took the vodka from his hand.  He didn’t resist me.  “You can handle whatever it is you’re dealing with right now.  I have faith in that much.”  Hell, I half thought he could handle _anything_ after what he’d already been through.  

Max scoffed.  “I appreciate your confidence; I’m glad at least one of us thinks I’m competent.  I have to ask, why are you so adamant about taking my booze?”

“Because when we met you were, and I quote, `self-medicating with alcohol.’  Are you sure you aren’t addicted?”

“I’m sure,” Max chuckled, though his good humor left me less than convinced.  He realized that.  “I’m not addicted to alcohol,” Max assured me, “I’ve been addicted to a lot of things, vodka is not one of them.”

“Then why are you so insistent on drinking?”

“I just appreciate having a drink that isn’t water.”  Max gripped the kabob between his teeth like a rose and began an elaborate attempt to retrieve his vodka that I recognized instantly.  

He wrapped one hand around the hand by which I held the bottle, slipping his fingers between mine and steering our arms towards the door.  His other hand rested against my hip.  He stood so close to me that I shivered.  I think that was why he chuckled as he started to guide us towards the guest bedroom.  It was a basic waltz, or something close to it and I wasn’t particularly uncoordinated, but Max being Max I felt incredibly clumsy trying to match his silent steps in a dance I barely knew.  Somehow I managed not to step on his feet and we made it into the bedroom.  I didn’t expect this to be more than an effort to get his vodka back— even if he was interested in me, we’d basically been arguing, which hardly set a romantic mood— so it came as a surprise when he pulled me into a long kiss.  Somehow he continued to hold the kabob but kissed almost normally, aside from the lingering taste of squirrel.  I realized as he ended the kiss that his lips and tongue must have been incredibly dexterous.  He’d already worked his fingers underneath mine, leaving him holding his bottle of vodka entirely beneath my very loose grip, and when he broke the kiss he slipped the bottle free and spun out of my grip, gracefully twirling over to perch on the end of the bed in a move that would have been even more stunning had he been wearing a tailcoat.  As it was, it let his suit jacket billow like a small cape and left his tie disheveled.  Max smirked honestly, for a change, set the kabob on the bedside table, and sipped his vodka.  

I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.  “You know things would be very boring around here if you ever just asked for something.”

He let out a raucous laugh, “We can’t have that.  Maybe next time I should follow through on that threat I made a few weeks back?  That I’d climb you like that pole?”  I blushed and he chuckled.  “You seem so against my drinking, so I have to ask, why is it that you don’t drink?”

I frowned at him.  “I drink.”  I must have drank _something_ around him, right?  I mean, I had wine sometimes, it wasn’t as if he thought I abstained from alcohol entirely…  

Max raised his scarred eyebrow dubiously.  “Really?”

“Yes,” I blustered, surprised rather than actually offended, “I drink, I just don’t like living with so many alcoholics.”

Max smirked even more playfully and set the vodka on the table beside the bed for a moment.  He stripped from the waist up and grabbed the bottle again.  I didn’t realize what he was doing until he poured a few sips of vodka on the tense muscles of his chest and beckoned me towards him.  “Prove it.”

I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t tempted.  I didn’t even like vodka, but looking at Max stretched out like that with the clear drink slowly trickling along his sternum…  He must have done this before; he kept his body nearly level so the vodka stayed mostly in place, but his breathing shifted his chest just enough that it slowly started to flow downward.  And the way he’d been acting, getting things done, trying to improve life in the Mojave, even the flirting and romantic flourishes— all of it just played so perfectly to what I found attractive.  But at the same time, barely an hour ago I’d had to remind myself that for one reason or another, he wanted the courier dead.  It was probably due to his grudge against the NCR, and as much as I disliked them, they had the best odds of stopping the Legion; even setting aside the fact that Lucia was both my friend and relatively innocent, if he killed her, that risked the entire Mojave.  Even if he _could_ stop the Legion and make Vegas independent without her help, I couldn’t just let him kill Lucia.  I don’t think I would have bothered to stop myself and take the time to worry about this except that the last time he’d slept with me, Max had just been trying to distract himself.  I _wanted_ to trust him.  On most things, I had absolute faith in him.  But Max hated the NCR blindly, and by extension, he hated Lucia, and he was cunning enough to recognize that I would try to stop him from killing her.  Trying to get me to drink, even a little, meant he might be trying to get me drunk, and this whole thing could be a method to make sure I fell asleep before Lucia returned.  I’d already seen him use sex as a distraction plenty of times before.  

Max dipped a finger into the vodka on his chest when I hesitated.  He licked it clean more seductively than I’d ever seen anyone lick anything, and that was saying something.  I rallied my self-control and stared him down, trying to find the least offensive way to ask if he wanted to kill Lucia.  He certainly did, whether or not he actually planned to go through with that— if he answered honestly, at least I’d know he wasn’t lying completely.  I might even be able to believe that he wasn’t just having sex with me to distract me.  Damn Enclave lifestyle for making me paranoid.  Come to think of it, that might also be the reason he’d become so deceptive.  

*       *      *

When he didn’t approach, I had to swallow a frustrated sigh.  “What?  Don’t like vodka?”

“Well, I’m not fond of that either,” Arcade admitted, “but… are you planning to kill Lucia?”

My brows knit.  I was more disappointed than surprised; he didn’t trust me.  Was this how it would have felt to be the boy who cried wolf?  I know I wasn’t the most honest man, but I did _some_ things honestly.  He might have just caught on that she was helping the NCR, and I wanted them dead or at least out of the Mojave, but more likely given his timing, he thought that I wanted to sleep with him and get him drunk so he’d be out cold when she came back.  I had to admit, the idea _had_ crossed my mind.  I’d tried once before to manipulate him with lethal consequences, and that guilt still tore me up, I tried not to remember that fight.  I wasn’t about to sleep with him so I could murder his friend.  I couldn’t do that to Arcade.  “I want her dead, yes.  But I’m not going to kill her tonight.”

“…oh.”  He sounded less upset than I’d expected.  I guess he wasn’t surprised.  

In the hope of salvaging my chances for sex, I elaborated, “Look, Lucia isn’t the perfect little angel everyone seems to think she is, there’s a reason she’s got fucking terrifying admirers.  I want her dead, but at the moment, she’s sort of got me stuck and I can’t act against her however much I want to.  I’m not just trying to kill her because she’s NCR, although I admit that doesn’t make me any more forgiving of her actions.”  I sighed and gestured towards the dresser drawer I’d claimed for my few possessions unrelated to crafting, “If you really can’t trust me, look in there.”  I felt the vodka on my chest make its way to my abdomen as I moved a little too much while I spoke.  

Arcade opened the drawer and frowned at me.  I explained, “I wasn’t going to bother with this, but handcuff me to the bed frame if you’re so worried I’m going to kill her.  I can’t pick locks and even if I could, the only wire I have is powerfully electrified.  The key’s in there as well, it should be easy enough for you to find.”

Arcade sighed as well and from that I gathered that he didn’t like the idea, probably because he didn’t realize that I wasn’t averse to spending my nights chained up, but evidently he preferred to make sure there were no murders tonight.  He brought the cuffs and sat on the bed beside me.  “Sorry about this.”

I chuckled, feeling the vodka trickle even lower because of that.  “Don’t be,” I crossed my wrists above my head and watched Arcade close the cuffs over them, “I quite enjoy being handcuffed to a bed.”  

He managed a half-hearted grin, still trying to shake the knowledge that I hoped to kill the courier.  “I really can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”  He was going to say something else after that, but I pretended not to notice.  He wanted to ask why I wanted Lucia dead; he was going to ask that sooner or later now that I’d tried to convince him this wasn’t just an old grudge against the NCR.  If I told him now, not only would sex be off the table for tonight, but with myself handcuffed to a bed, he’d probably confront Lucia and get himself killed and I’d be powerless to stop it.  

“The vodka’s been making progress, this will just be a blatant attempt to get you to suck me off if we wait much longer.”

“Oh, good,” he remarked, “then I still have time.”

I hadn’t expected him to joke after the serious matter we’d just been discussing and it surprised me enough that I laughed openly.  The vodka slid along one side of my abdomen, progressing even further.  If we didn’t do this soon, we were going to get vodka on the sheets.  “Arcade,” I argued, “I’ll tell you more about what’s going on tomorrow, can we just relax for now?  Lucia isn’t here and even if she was, you’ve got me handcuffed to a bed, don’t just leave me alone like this!”  

He sighed, but I knew he was considering it.  I knew I’d convinced him as soon as I saw that adorably playful gleam in his eye.  “Well, I can hardly waste vodka, now can I?”  

I’d had so many people do body shots off of me and this was the first time I’d willingly suggested it.  It helped that I knew what caused my rash because now I could at least chose a liquor that wouldn’t make things drastically less comfortable.  Where I kept my vodka, it was usually fairly cold and the Lucky 38’s air conditioning meant it had stayed chilled even on my skin.  Most of the time when I served as a living bar, I had scruffy, over-eager drunks pawing at my crotch or ass while slobbering up lukewarm whiskey; even had the vodka been warm, this was a drastic contrast.  Arcade had clearly never done this before, and unlike the previous time when the two of us both needed to lose ourselves in a distraction, this time he was hesitant.  He kissed his way from my chest to my abdomen like he wasn’t sure I wanted him.  I barely felt his tongue until he reached the place where most of the vodka had pooled at a valley between muscles— my abs were especially tensed because I was trying to prop myself up without the aid of my arms.  He sipped the vodka off my belly like he was drinking fine wine from a glass and I nearly laughed out loud.  He did these things that were just so perfectly Old World, like somehow the past two hundred years hadn’t happened and it still mattered that he wore pajamas to sleep, or didn’t drink before noon, or tried not to sleep with men under twenty.  Growing up, there’d been a few fleeting years where old King-Arthur stories and Brotherhood titles had led me to believe that Brotherhood Knights and Paladins really adhered to some moral code beyond military doctrines, but chivalry really was dead, or close to it, and to my great surprise an Enclave-born doctor turned out to be more of a gentleman than the men who sullied the title “Paladin.”  

When the vodka was gone, I strained forward against the handcuffs and somehow managed to reach Arcade’s lips for a kiss.  I let the cuffs wear into the skin of my wrists until my straining abdomen had to relax so I could breath.  When I fell back onto the pillow, Arcade followed me.  I felt him stretch out to lie beside me and hooked one leg around his waist before he could lie down completely.  I ran my thighs along his hips and back up until they gripped him just above his belt.  If I wanted to, I could have pulled him on top of me and I’m sure I could have managed to get him off without removing his pants or freeing my hands, but I stopped and let him decide.  I wanted sex, I’m sure he knew that, but if he wasn’t interested after the conversation we’d just had or because of my age, I hope he realized that I would stop.  I’d been ready to leave him alone completely earlier today.  

Arcade broke the kiss, but he took the hint and rolled towards me so he lay between my legs.  With my hands unavailable, I ran my ankle along the inside of his upper thigh before I realized he wanted to say something.  

“Max…”  He glanced down at my ankle, still nearly at his crotch.  I let my legs flop open and he finished his sentence with a look somewhere between amusement and frustration.  I brought up serious topics during sex, so yes, I suppose I was a hypocrite for trying to avoid these conversations when I hadn’t meant to start them.  “Max, do you— er— …you _wanted_ to work at the Gomorra, right?  You weren’t…?”

I sighed.  “I wasn’t forced into that.  I did actively seek out the job I had.  Although the bosses were a bit more domineering than I’d expected.”  It made sense why he was asking; he had qualms about my age, and now he worried that I’d been forced into prostitution, thus skewing my views on sex so I might not really _want_ this.  “Arcade, I want this.  I want you.”  I didn’t dare admit that although I’d usually been able to avoid unwanted sex at the Gomorra— through a mix of alcohol, hallucinogens, lies, and aphrodisiacs— I hadn’t been so lucky here.  But I wanted him to know that if he’d picked up on some subtle expression or twinge of fear, he wasn’t wrong.  “I haven’t wanted it every time.  You’re as far from that as anyone can be; I know you won’t do this if I don’t want you to.”  I looked away so I wouldn’t see if he felt pity or outrage or if he was just moved that I felt so safe with him.  I tried to lighten the mood.  “Hell, at this rate, I’d almost think _you_ didn’t want this.”  

I started to laugh at my own joke, but fell silent as he kissed me.  He undid my belt and pulled it off, letting it slide off to the floor.  With my hands cuffed, I struggled to reach him.  I managed to run my fingers through the soft curls of his hair.  My hair was straight and soft —I liked to think it felt like rabbit fur but if rabbits survived, I’d never seen one.  Arcade’s, on the other hand, was just as soft, but thicker; it had structure more like wool but infinitely softer than the sheepskin lining of my coat.  However terrible they had been, the Enclave had certainly bred stunning men.  

Arcade broke the kiss to see what he was doing as he stripped to his knees.  Well experienced in using my legs for unusual tasks, I shed my own pants and briefs in under ten seconds without the use of my hands.  I could tell what I meant as a practical effort left Arcade both impressed and intimidated.  I had a _lot_ of experience.  He wasn’t the first to find that a little daunting, but he was the first where I wished he didn’t.  At the Gomorra, of the clients I had sex with, I’d had men so eager they would have probably raped me if I’d resisted and I’d had men who paid and then shyly let me take complete control— either through conscious choice or through their own inexperience— but Arcade was very different.  With how often he hesitated, I didn’t dare take a dominant role and I didn’t want to.  I wanted him to be in control; I trusted him to be in control and not hurt me, and right now I needed this just to reinforce to myself that I could still trust people.  It wouldn’t work if he used me as others had and I knew that he wouldn’t; but he hesitated so much that this kept stalling.  When he paused to watch my pants flutter to the floor, I half expected this to stop where it was, despite the fact that we were both mostly naked.  

Instead, Arcade lay back down between my legs.  He did nothing else just yet and he wasn’t visibly aroused, but the position rested his crotch against mine and after years of similar sensations, my cock perked up reflexively.  He must have felt it, but didn’t look down just yet.  

“Max, I want this,” he assured me.  “I just want to make sure that you do as well.  I need to make sure.  Max, I swear, whatever happens, I’ll never hurt you.”  He kissed me and I kissed him back.  At the time, I took that as his mood talking.  I never thought he was lying, but being on a bed with your dick pressed against another, fairly attractive man’s body had a way of bringing out grand promises even when that other man hadn’t been promising even grander futures all day.  I barely considered the possibility that he was serious and it never once occurred to me that he might hold himself to that promise in the future.  Even after circumstances changed.  

In that kiss, his tongue poked between my lips and then stopped, only pressing further into my mouth once I pushed my own tongue against it.  I pressed our lips together until I felt like they might bruise.  He ran one hand along my back, his thumb tracing the muscles of my side.  I’d noticed it before but it still amazed me that his hands were nearly as soft as mine.  Despite the difficulties of life in wasteland, his skin was like velvet; we’d both lived lives mostly sheltered from the heat and struggle for survival and that showed.  Working with books and tools, I had developed an exceptionally strong grip and I’d noticed he had as well, probably for the same reason— mechanical repairs and medicine or medical research weren’t too different in terms of the muscles they developed.  And whether he’d been officially trained or just figured things out from his knowledge of human anatomy, Arcade’s powerful fingers rubbed the knotted muscles they passed over.  I moaned into the kiss.  

Arcade’s other hand massaged my shoulder and back but didn’t linger overly long on its way to my rear.  Which was good; with him mostly naked on top of me, I didn’t need more than physical contact to get hard.  I’d wanted this to begin with and now I needed it.  I was probably stronger than him, but I was also a bit smaller and with my muscles already tense to hold my head up so I could kiss him, I’d shifted my center of gravity so far towards my shoulders that it probably made it much easier for him to lift my hips one handed.  I’d had sex too many different ways to have a guess as to what he planned before he did that.  I’d half expected him to still be figuring that out himself with how hesitant he was being.  The hand on my side lunged off the bed and grabbed the jar of lube I’d purposefully left on top of my bag.  Nobody else had seen it before, so they weren’t likely to open or steal my mysterious unlabeled jar; only Arcade would recognize it.  I’d left it there to tempt him three days ago when we got back and I’d been meaning to put it away today.  I guess it was lucky that I hadn’t.  

Perhaps surprisingly, Arcade was one of the two tallest men I’d ever slept with so I didn’t fully expect it when he thrust into me without needing to break the kiss or make me lean too far forward.  I could keep my back almost straight and he could still reach, and it wasn’t uncomfortable for me either— quite a feat, considering that usually having sex in this position left me practically a pretzel.  I normally rested my knees against my partner’s shoulders to give me a better grip, but with Arcade, my knees could only reach his seventh rib.  

After Lucia, I knew I probably had scarring or some form of remaining damage even if the stimpaks Arcade had given me and the ones I’d used on myself had taken care of most of it.  I’d had many similar injuries but none had been that bad before; I couldn’t even remember half of what had happened that night or for a few nights afterward.  I’d been worried about what might happen now, with Arcade and if he’d tried this at Helios, I would have stopped him, but everything went fine.  I don’t know if that’s because I had healed more than I’d expected or because he was so gentle.  It was like he thought he might hurt me and that might have been the reason; I couldn’t remember if I’d told him what happened.  I don’t think that I had, but maybe I’d admitted it in some delirious rambling.  If I had, either he hadn’t believed me or he didn’t know the real source of that abuse.  If he knew it was Lucia, he wouldn’t be alive.  

I’d gotten distracted worrying about old wounds and Lucia; I pressed into the kiss with renewed focus and tapped my heels against his back.  I’d hoped he’d take the hint, but he didn’t.  I broke the kiss to talk to him.  “Come on.  You can be more forceful than that!”  I nipped his ear so his mouth was free to answer.  

He panted an answer into my neck as he started thrusting just a little faster, “Are you sure?”  I understood why he asked; he was worried for the same reason that I was, but I’d probably be fine and he misinterpreted my silence.  “I mean… because a few weeks ago… you were bleeding…”  

“Yeah.”  I looked away and reasoned with myself.  It had been weeks and a lot of stimpaks, I was fine.  Whatever had happened, I was fine now.  And this was Arcade, not Lucia.  “Arcade, I’m fine.  You don’t need to hold back.”  I kissed him again.  He only hesitated for a moment before he kissed me back.  He really did want this as much as I did; he’d been going so slow, but now he started in earnest.  

Even when he stopped being so afraid of hurting me— emotionally or physically— I still knew he was thinking about me.  It wasn’t like with Lucia, or most of my clients, where they lost sight of the fact that I was a person, or just never cared about that to begin with; it was different. This was… a little alarming.  I still wanted him, and I certainly wasn’t about to stop him, but it made me worry.  He seemed so… Old World; by now I knew he probably expected me to be serious about this.  The problem was, I wasn’t sure I could be.  At the very least, he’d probably get upset if I slept with Lucia, and if Lucia wanted that, I probably wouldn’t have a choice.  Besides, I’d always been one to flee from responsibility and commitment as if they were rabid deathclaws. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might add to the attempted smut at the end of this chapter. I couldn't really get into it again after the first part, but I may go back to it later.


	14. Wired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucia makes her move to isolate Max completely.

Somewhere around three in the morning, we both lay panting and exhausted on the bed.  I rolled off of him and slid a finger under his collar to make sure his pulse didn’t get too erratic.  By this point, we were both covered in a mix of semen and lube; it hadn’t occurred to me until now, but it was lucky that nobody had returned to the suite during this time.  And evidently, Cass was still unconscious, considering she hadn’t come in asking to join us.  

Max seemed perfectly content and that was so rare that I couldn’t resist kissing him.  The kiss must have broken that ephemeral moment, because when I drew back, he frowned thoughtfully and sighed.  He shifted his wrists in the handcuffs, adjusting to rest his arms on the pillow more comfortably.  He looked serious and I braced myself for any number of awful post-coital revelations.  Mostly, I expected him to say that he didn’t want a relationship or maybe that he preferred women, so I wasn’t prepared for what he actually planned to admit.  

He had the same tone I’d used the few times I’d foolishly admitted my Enclave ties to my lovers, so it almost made me laugh when he began, “I know you were born in the Enclave.”  

“Yeah?  I figured we both made that clear enough to each other, even without stating it explicitly.”

Max grimaced.  “Yes.  I’m not positive you understood my side of things through all the —admittedly necessary— obfuscations.  I want to state it directly just to be sure we’re on the same page.”

“…Okay.”  He was just being paranoid, right?  I don’t think there was any way I could have failed to understand that we both had roughly the same past.  

Max steeled himself.  “Look… we both grew up running and hiding from the NCR, we both lost a lot of people thanks to the NCR.  We were both born into technologically advanced, isolated communities, and both of them made us enemies of the NCR by birth.  And we both rejected these communities— at least for the most part— and we certainly don’t agree with either of their ideals, but I was never Enclave.”

I stared at him.  Really, it should have been obvious what he was saying at that point, but I didn’t want to believe it.  There was only one other organization he could be talking about, so I shouldn’t have felt so shocked and hurt when he quietly admitted, “I was born into the Brotherhood of Steel.  I left when I was thirteen.”  I was completely blindsided by his additional revelation, “I’m Gabriel Maxson, one of the last two living descendants of Roger Maxson, founder of the Brotherhood of Steel.”  

*        *         *

I knew it would be a difficult truth for him to deal with, but he looked so devastated.  I couldn’t imagine a more crushing truth unless I’d also been helping the Legion.  And I wasn’t.  But I had considered it.  I didn’t hate them like I hated the NCR.  

“I didn’t intend to deceive you,” I explained, “I never lied; I realized you probably misunderstood me, but… I wasn’t sure how to tell you.  I didn’t want you to think I’d been part of the Enclave, I just knew… I knew we’d both been through the same things, even if it was for different reasons.  I know what it’s like to wake up even when you’re safe, even when you _know_ you’re as safe as possible, and to lie awake terrified that somehow they’re going to find you.”  

He rolled onto his back, somehow managing not to fall off the narrow bed, and rubbed his temples.  “Yes.  I get it.  You never actually lied, I just… I was just really, really stupid about all this.”  He stood and frowned at the sheets beneath me.  He must have still been considering what I’d told him, because he wondered, “Gabriel Maxson— is that where the nickname `Max’ came from?”

I nodded.  I clicked my handcuffs against the bed frame and changed the subject, “If you’re planning to clean up, I can help.”

Arcade narrowed his eyes.  

There was the obvious problem that I needed a shower after all that and so did he, so leaving me handcuffed to the bed would defeat the purpose of cleaning up at all and besides, it was hardly humane by his standards.  Personally, I’d been chained to a bed for a lot longer than this and in worse conditions, but I appreciated that Arcade let me shower before chaining me to the clean bed and showering and cleaning on his own.  

He’d reacted better than I’d expected but not as well as I’d hoped.  I’d hardly thought that he’d just take it in stride and suggest we have sex again, but I had entertained the idea that he might tell me it was okay, that we’d both rejected the life we’d been born into so it didn’t matter too much.  He hadn’t attacked me— I’d never thought he would— and he hadn’t even gotten visibly angry.  But I could tell he was upset.  He felt like I’d deceived him, even though I hadn’t meant to.  I’d realized that he thought I was also Enclave, but admitting I was really a member of one of the organizations that had destroyed his home— not only that, but the descendant of the man who had founded that group…  I just hadn’t been able to do that.  I’d only reached the point today where I felt I couldn’t lead him on any longer.  I wondered where it left us.  He needed time; I knew it wouldn’t help to ask him where we stood now, however much I wanted to.  

Handcuffed to the bed— and having been awake since around four after I’d passed out from exhaustion last evening— I must have dozed off despite my racing thoughts.  

*       *      *

I’d just finished cleaning up when Lucia returned.  The elevator opened while I was crossing through the hallway in my pajamas with the freshly cleaned sheets.  As much as I wanted to tell her about our breakthrough about stimpaks, I would rather not have to explain why I’d washed the sheets in the first place, but the courier saw me before I could reach the relative safety of the guest bedroom and be out of her immediate sight.  Her eyes glanced across the bundled sheets in my arms to my embarrassed expression.  “…Hi, Lucia…”

My heart sank as I watched her brows knit and her smile falter.  I knew what was coming before she spoke.  “You and Max…?”

Somehow I doubted she’d appreciate if I answered with “obviously,” so I sought a tactful wording and found none.  I hadn’t _known_ she and Max were together, but I’d strongly suspected it.  I was pretty sure I’d asked him several times before, but he’d always avoided the question.  Today, with his clearly murderous intentions, I’d figured they must have ended it, but I’d never asked.  Max, Brotherhood heritage aside, had clearly spent enough time as a prostitute to skew his idea of a healthy relationship; he might not have even realized Lucia cared if he slept with other people.  Lucia, for her part, was so naive that she probably hadn’t thought to make that clear.  I was the only one who knew both of them well enough to have seen this problem coming and had any chance of stopping it.  I guess it was really my fault that left the courier heartbroken.  “…Sorry, I…”  There wasn’t anything to say.  Between her… and Max…  I should have realized.

Lucia’s breath caught in a sob.  “Arcade?!  I-I trusted you!  I can’t believe you’d just—!”  She sobbed again and I set the sheets down and attempted to hug her, but she shoved me away.  Lucia glared at me.  “I thought it was just _rumors_ with you and Max, why the hell would you—?!”  She paced the narrow hallway and huffed.  She was pissed off, understandably, but that was just a thin veil over how hurt she felt; every breath came out like a sob and she had tears streaming down her face however angrily she shouted.  I could handle rage, I’m pretty sure I could have stayed composed if General Oliver himself was screaming threats at me, but watching Lucia breaking down like this just left me cold.  Nothing I could say would help and I had no idea how I’d sort this out in the future.  Max had me wrapped around his finger and he knew it; he knew exactly how to play me if he wanted to.  I didn’t trust that I could resist him even after seeing Lucia like this.  

I wasn’t surprised when she slapped me.  With her build and size, it barely hurt and I probably deserved worse.  “I thought you were better than this!”  She stormed into her room and slammed the door.  I heard it lock behind her.  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I could hear her crying inside.  I ran a hand through my disheveled, damp hair and sighed.  This was a mess.  Whatever Max thought of her, it was just his grudge against the NCR distorting his perceptions.  Heck, given that he’d used to deal in information, she was working for NCR higher-ups, and she kept him here in relative safety, I wondered if he might be manipulating her.  He seemed genuine in his attraction to me, although that was probably wishful thinking.  Even if he wasn’t, he did sincerely despise her.  Their relationship had to be a ruse on his part.  He’d been using her.  Max was smart, smarter than I was at the very least; he must have realized that Lucia would expect what they had to be exclusive and to mean something more than it did to him.  In which case, he’d either meant for her to catch us and find out, or he’d been honest with me and this was a relationship he cared about while his thing with Lucia was just to control her.  I’d seen enough of Max’s methods that I’d be willing to bet it was the former.  

I stormed into the bedroom ready to give Max a piece of my mind… and found him fast asleep.  The handcuffs forced him to sleep with his arms curled in front of him and his hands on the pillow.  In the cold room, he’d curled into what was almost the fetal position.  Cleaned up and dressed in a set of pajamas I hadn’t known he owned, he looked so peaceful.  It brought to mind everything he’d been through that for once he’d taken off his collar and bracers.  He kept his wrists pressed together even while he slept, but I could still see the edges of a few horizontal scars.  The vertical ones were hidden.  Even if he was a manipulative bastard, he’d endured more than enough to skew his sense of morality.  

Max had been awake for at least twenty hours.  I didn’t know when he’d woken up, but after the past few days and with his rate of activity, he needed sleep.  He usually slept more restlessly so seeing him lying almost perfectly still, curled up with a blanket that had slid off the bed where he probably couldn’t reach it, I decided to let him sleep.  I walked over and draped the blanket back over him, a little surprised when he didn’t stir.  He wasn’t faking; his breathing suggested a very deep sleep so I probably couldn’t have awakened him even if I’d wanted to.  He wasn’t lying about having been through a lot of the same things that I had.  I knew that just from the time I’d spent with him; people who’d spent so much of their lives hiding didn’t usually sleep well.  I’d seen him jolt awake and I’d seen him lying sleepless and tense too often to believe that he might have faked that to fool me.  He wouldn’t have told me he was a Maxson if he hadn’t been sincere about that much.  

Not for the first time, I found myself at a loss.  I couldn’t decide what to do about Max or if I was mad at him or just disappointed and I couldn’t talk to him right now anyway.  The courier was locked in her room and Max was handcuffed to a steel-frame bed; even if he woke up, she was safe.  Physically, at least.  I checked on Cass in the kitchen to make sure she was still breathing, remade the other bed, changed into my usual clothes, and left the suite.  I barely walked for an hour before my aching feet reminded me of the trip to Helios and I remembered how tired I was just from today.  I needed to clear my head, but hopefully sleep would do that just as well as a walk.  Even if I would be going to bed only a few feet away from Max.  

*       *       *

In a long and sordid history of mistakes, I think one of the worst had to be sleeping handcuffed in the suite of a known enemy.  I don’t know when I woke up the first time and I have no memory of anything after I fell asleep that night until I came to, lying sweaty and exhausted on Lucia’s bed wearing only my bracers and collar.  I’d had sex at least once, I knew that much even if I couldn’t remember it.  I could feel my heart twitching about in my chest like a squirrel on jet, but it didn’t hurt.  Nothing hurt at all right now.  Staring at the ceiling in front of me, I found myself absolutely content to marvel at the subtle gradient of amber light over plaster.  I knew this feeling.  I was stoned.  

My right hand felt wrong somehow, but I couldn’t think clearly enough to realize why.  I wasn’t alone.  There was someone lying on the bed beside me.  I felt warm fingers under my wrist where the laces knotted to hold my bracer in place.  They didn’t move when I stretched my arm.  It seemed like a woman’s hand, and I knew I’d had sex with a woman, so I guessed Cass.  She wasn’t moving and hadn’t gotten on top of me again, so she must be asleep.  I tried to sit up but my back refused to lift me.  My body remained stubbornly weak when I tried to just prop myself up on my elbows.  I settled for turning my head.  Cass lay sprawled on the bed beside me.  With blankets and pillows rumpled around us, I couldn’t see her clearly, but wild red hair and a lingering odor of whiskey told me it must be her.  I would have gone back to sleep, I wanted to go back to sleep.  It felt like there was a vice around my chest; I couldn’t breathe even though I could feel the air filling my lungs the same as always.  I wasn’t coherent enough to realize what that meant.  

Moving my head alerted my captor.  

“Fuck,” Lucia giggled, “you’re still alive?  I thought for sure that would have killed you even if the rest didn’t.”  She certainly wasn’t perturbed by this fact.  If I’d been lucid, that would have terrified me.  

“What?” I mumbled.  I couldn’t think clearly enough to understand why my heart beat to the rhythm of a gunfight.  “The rest of what?”  I tried again to sit up and failed, so I settled for rolling onto my side to face her voice.  I found Lucia standing much closer than I’d expected.  She wore the long t-shirt she slept in, suggesting we might have had a threesome, although even as drugged as I was, I didn’t trust her enough to believe that.  She grabbed my hand and held my fingers in place to keep the palm exposed.  I couldn’t imagine why and I didn’t dwell on it at the time.  

“Do you even realize you’re high?”  She had this look of sadistic fascination.  The memory of that gaze stuck with me for a long time and it ended up haunting my nightmares once the drugs wore off.  

“Yeah,” I admitted, gasping for air through my nose.  I was still panting because I still felt like I was suffocating.  She couldn’t have poisoned the air, could she?  No.  She’d be dying as well.  What the hell was going on with my body?  I found myself suddenly distracted.  “I smell bacon.”

Lucia giggled hysterically.  “Bacon?”  She laughed so hard that I don’t think she could breathe either and I lay there quietly thinking about breakfast until she calmed down.  I could breathe a bit easier by the time that happened, so in my dazed state, I somehow thought I must have been laughing as well.  Maybe I was, I’m not sure.  When she could speak, Lucia remarked, “Well _of_ _course_ you smell bacon.”  Without explaining why that was, she told me, “I used up the last of that Med-X on you.  I thought I’d be able to make you overdose, but you’ve made things so much more fun.  How much of that shit were you taking before Arcade got you clean, six syringes a day?  You didn’t even pass out until after that!  You didn’t pass out you’d come and I had to give you some of the other chems I’ve saved up to even get you interested in sex!”  She laughed again and I wondered if I’d slept with her or both of them.  Lucia would have gotten what she wanted regardless, at least Cass might have enjoyed herself last night.  Or tonight.  Or this morning.  I couldn’t really tell.  

I couldn’t do the math of how much she’d given me and I couldn’t guess what else she’d dosed me with.  Lucia had been hunting Fiends for the NCR; she’d have access to crap _I_ didn’t even make.  At the time, this was a hopeful thought.  I was happy.  Whatever she’d given me, it was _good_.  I wanted more.  I was always going to want more.  

Lucia was laughing again and I didn’t care.  I was too out of my head to care what she did to me right now or even to notice and appreciate that my heart had gone back to a more normal beat; I closed my eyes and nearly fell asleep.  

That was when Lucia let go of my hand and started screaming.  

*       *       *

Traveling with Lucia, I’d been awakened more than once by the girl screaming my name because we were under attack, but I didn’t expect the same rude awakening in the suite of the Lucky 38.  Still, I heard panic in her tone and that convinced me to run rather than lie in bed for a moment begrudging my lack of sleep.  With my background, attack remained my first thought when I’d been woken up by a scream.  Following that, I expected a bad cut or a drunken fall; worst case scenario was some serious but relatively random medical emergency like a heart attack or appendicitis- between Cass and Max the former was significantly more likely than usual.  It was possible, but even with Lucia’s scream I anticipated nothing worse than a sprained ankle.  I still sprinted towards the yell.  

Maybe it was due to my haste or just because I was still half-asleep, but it came as a surprise when I found Max sprawled on Lucia’s bed.  I shouldn’t have been shocked by that or by the fact that he was naked, but I still felt betrayed, especially once I noticed the gleam of moisture on his penis more so than the sweat that covered the rest of him, confirming that he hadn’t just decided to strip.  I’d stopped in the doorway, staring at Max; it took me a few seconds to hear Lucia as she babbled and sobbed.  

Lucia was dressed in a long, loose t-shirt and probably nothing else, but I didn’t look too closely.  Sprawled on the bed beside Max, Cass wore even less than he did.  He could have had sex with either of them.  Or both.  I barely glanced at her before looking back at Max, who wasn’t moving.  

Lucia held Max’s wrist while she cried.  I still hadn’t heard a word she was saying, but I saw that and I feared she might be checking for a pulse.  Maybe he’d passed out.  Maybe he’d had a heart attack.  I grabbed his other arm to check the same and snarled curses at the laces on his bracer as I tugged it off.  Max jerked his arm out of my grip and mumbled something unintelligible as I grabbed it again.  It was the first sign of life I’d seen from him yet and I sighed.  “Thank god!  You’re alive.”  He didn’t seem to hear me and as I spoke, his eyelids fluttered shut.  Checking his pulse, I found out why.  His pulse was so slow and erratic I could hardly believe he was conscious.  He probably wasn’t conscious now.  

“Arcade!” Lucia shrieked, finally shifting my focus away from Max.  She held his right hand palm up and shook it to draw my attention to the exposed copper wire in the center.  Lucia raised her other hand to show the blob of pink polymer she held, the same material Max used as an insulator to keep his implant from accidentally electrocuting someone.  Lucia nodded towards Cass, but I examined Max first.  What I’d mistaken for a flush due to what he’d been doing turned out to be sub-dermal bruising; the device itself had probably shorted out when the current traveled back through his body.  Normally, an electrical shock like this would have traveled a slightly different path than what I was seeing, so Max must have modified his body even further so the current would avoid more vital places.  Even so, it had probably caused the relatively mild arrhythmia occurring right now and that might get worse in the next few minutes.  If his heart rate didn’t return to normal soon, he might even die, but he’d survived the initial shock, so his odds weren’t awful.  I could see bruises where the current had ruptured blood vessels and even a few small veins, but whatever he’d implanted aside from the device itself had limited the damage.  Ironically, I hadn’t noticed what had happened at first because his precautions obscured the usual signs.  I double checked the zap implant to make sure it had stopped working before running my hands over Max to check for internal injuries.  Aside from his heart and some bruising, he was fine.  

Lucia shook my arm.  “Arcade!”  I didn’t notice at the time that she no longer sounded grief-stricken, only annoyed.  She gestured helplessly towards Cass and I turned to examine the caravaner.  I could feel the heat radiating from her skin before I even touched her.  Her body was covered in the branching crimson of ruptured blood vessels and her forearm had a seared and bloody black hole where the wire had made contact.  I’d already seen the aftermath of one time Max has used the weapon, but this was different.  He’d barely touched the thug and the jolt had probably forced them apart, but in this case either the current had been much stronger or the wire had stayed live and in contact with Cass’ arm for at least a minute.  It was incredible that she hadn’t caught fire.  Max had probably passed out as soon as the current traveled back into his body through the contact with Cass’s skin and Cass may well have lost consciousness for the same reason.  For whatever reason, the circuit hadn’t fried the device immediately, which was odd but maybe Max had built it to withstand a short at least for a little while.  That might not even have changed things.  Cass was dead.  

Lucia knew that when I just sat back and stared at the body, at a loss.  Cass had died on contact— any voltage high enough to leave this kind of burn (because I suspected that Max would have modified the voltage rather than built the device to deliver sustained electrical shocks, considering it was implanted inside of him) would have killed her instantly.  The burn itself reached the bone and severed an artery, so she would have bled out through that if her heart had still been pumping.  Max had only survived because he’d prepared to be accidentally shocked by the implant.  I grabbed his wrist again and checked his pulse.  It had become more regular, though it was still slow.  He might have fallen asleep.  I don’t know if I checked to remind myself that he was still alive or that he’d nearly died; I was still furious with him.  He lay here helpless, but even if it was only an accident, his stupid implant had killed someone.  Cass wasn’t the most innocent woman, but she’d been a good person.  She’d still been drunk, I could smell the whiskey and it wouldn’t have cleared out of her system since last night.  Maybe if she’d been sober this wouldn’t have happened.  Actually, how _had_ this happened?  I could guess, and I wasn’t really sure I wanted to find out what Max got up to while I slept, but I had to know if this had been caused by Cass’s drunken antics or if the blame really lay with Max.  

Lucia sat beside me on the bed, staring at Cass, either too shocked or too appalled to cry.  

“What happened?”

She stared at me blankly for a moment before quietly explaining, “He…”  She studied the wire that sprouted from Max’s palm like some awful sapling.  I took the polymer from her hand and carefully covered it back up, making sure it wouldn’t touch his skin or itself just in case.  “That,” Lucia pointed at the putty, “must have fallen off while…  _During_.” 

I sighed.  Again, I didn’t really want to know, but curiosity got the better of me.  “Was it just the two of them or…?”

“The three of us.”

My heart sank and Lucia must have realized that she wasn’t the only one who felt betrayed when Max did this sort of thing.  “Arcade, I’m sorry.  We talked and I wasn’t planning to…  You know how he can be.”

“Believe me,” I sighed, “I know how Max can be.”  Max mumbled something, phasing in and out of consciousness and possibly hearing his name.  I checked his pulse and knew he’d be fine.  His heart had gone back to a healthy beat.  I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but knew he wouldn’t be able to hear it right now and I didn’t want to make Lucia feel any guiltier than she already seemed to.  

“What do we do with her?” Lucia murmured.  She hadn’t dealt with dead bodies aside from raiders, legionaries, and other enemies; she had no idea what to do when the person deserved some kind of funeral.  I didn’t have too much experience with that either.  I’d witnessed a lot of deaths, but most of the time no one had had the time or safety to bury them, let alone arrange a funeral.  

I explained what I knew about pre-war funeral rights because I didn’t really know any wasteland traditions— or even if such things existed.  We decided to take Cass outside, off the Strip, and bury her; Lucia claimed she knew a good place.  Getting the body there was the tricky part.  True enough, people were killed on the Strip pretty often, so it wasn’t odd to see folks dragging a body through the streets, but neither of us wanted to make the caravaner as much of a spectacle in death as she had been in life.  We set Cass in the hall on a chair, draped with a dark blanket while Lucia composed herself and cleaned up and I moved Max back to the bed where he usually slept.  

We went out to bury Cass before dawn, when there would be the fewest people out on the streets.  I could carry Cass easily without help— heck, if I wanted to I could carry Max, and Cass had a much slimmer build even though they were roughly the same height.  That fact unnerved me once we had Cass wrapped in a blanket to disguise her body.  It could have just as easily been Max under there.  Even if the thick, rough fabric disguised her shape, she was still warm and my trained hands still felt the unmistakable ridges of her vertebrae and the bone and muscle of her legs as I carried her.  I alternately reminded myself that this was Cass and tried to forget entirely that I was carrying a corpse.  I tried to think of it as some collection of plants or junk that just happened to feel like a body, and then it came to repulse me that I was trying to dehumanize her and then it would bother me that she felt so similar to Max and the train of thought would loop again.  Lucia led me along, all the usual spring completely gone from her steps.  She wore a sunny yellow dress with a series of daisies embroidered on the skirt.  It looked absurdly happy considering the circumstances and left her dour stare and tear-streaked face in stark contrast to her attire.  She led me to a patch of road littered with broken boxes, bottles, and the rotting corpse of a brahmin.  

“This was Cass’ caravan, wasn’t it?”

Lucia nodded.  “I don’t think she drank so much before it was destroyed, but that was before I met her.”  

I set Cass on the ground and spread the blanket out so we could see her face.  “At least she knew what happened to her caravan before…”  I cleared my throat and composed myself, “Before the end.”  I was trying to say something positive, but there wasn’t much to say.  She’d been a good person, and I wanted to say that except I knew it would sound like I just couldn’t think of anything else.  And that was true— I guess I didn’t really know her that well.  I guess I’d never really know her very well.  I’d only seen Cass when she was drinking, gambling, or asleep; I didn’t exactly know the best of her.  I could say that she’d helped Lucia, but we both knew that wasn’t really true.  Lucia had asked Cass to join her before she really knew the woman, probably because in her eyes trekking across the Mojave was better than sitting in a bar and drinking oneself to death.  She’d stopped traveling with Cass once they knew each other.  Lucia was one of the most fastidious people I knew, and that was really saying something.  In terms of trust and dealing with danger, she was naive, but she always double and triple checked what supplies we brought, what route we were taking, and all the other less combat-related details.  And even when we were fighting, she was always precise.  Cass’s spontaneous, often drunk antics just didn’t mesh with the way Lucia liked to operate.  _Hadn’t_ meshed.  Lucia enjoyed Cass’s company at the suite, I think, but she hadn’t traveled with Cass very often, so I couldn’t say that Cass had really helped bring about any of the change that Lucia was trying to effect.  Lucia just didn’t make that obvious because she was a nice person.  Really, Lucia had helped Cass; the two of them had worked together to figure out who was responsible for the destruction of Cass’ caravan and they’d supposedly killed the entire Crimson Caravan Company _and_ the Van Graffs themselves.  Both women tended to brag and I’d heard that from Cass while she’d been drunk, so I didn’t take it seriously.  

Neither of us could come up with anything else to say, so we got to digging.  I guess it was an upside to living in a desert that the dirt moved relatively easily once we broke the surface.  We were still exhausted once we reached a good depth.  Five feet might have been deep enough, but Lucia convinced me that something might still be able to get to Cass.  After that, the courier sat on the road while I finished digging.  I let her rest partly because she already looked exhausted and because I was both larger and stronger than her; if we’d really wanted to, she could have kept digging and I’d need to lift her out of the hole when we were done.  I planned to dig until I could still climb out on my own, but I wasn’t the most experienced digging holes of any kind, so I misjudged the depth.  

Lucia realized that shortly after my first failed attempt to climb out on my own.  She stood and looked down at me.  “You’re stuck?”

“Yes,” I sighed, trying again and failing as the edge of the grave crumbled where I gripped it.  I could get out on my own if I had just a little more leverage.  I held up a hand to the courier.  “Help me out?”  

For a long and unnerving moment, Lucia just stared down blankly.  I couldn’t read any emotion in her eyes and at the time I just thought she’d been distracted by grief.  It was a rather daunting reality to be pulling me out of the grave we’d dug for her friend.  

“…Lucia?  Hello?”

She shook her head, snapping out of a daze and took my hand without a word.  Once I had her help, I climbed out easily.  We lowered Cass’ body into the hole using the blanket and let the ends fall in after her.  They left her face exposed.  Even if her mouth and eyes stayed closed, it remained a\ disturbing sight, but neither of us were willing to climb back in to cover her completely and risk getting stuck on top of her.  Lucia said there were rumors of deathclaws nearby, a fact she hadn’t felt like mentioning until we had Cass in the grave, so I was even less willing to risk getting stuck when I would be facing not only dehydration and extreme heat, but the wasteland’s apex predator which might be very happy to find prey conveniently roasting for it.  We weren’t leaving Cass to be eaten, but we certainly weren’t risking our lives to make her presentable before we covered her with dirt.  

Burying her went smoothly after that.  Lucia picked up a board from a broken crate and stuck it at the head of the grave as a grave marker.  She took out her pocket knife to carve Cass’ name, her full name, which I’d never actually heard before.  I guess I still hadn’t heard it, I’d only read it.  After the name, Lucia stopped and stared at the grave.  “Do you know how old she was?”

I shook my head.  She’d never mentioned that either.  Even Max might not know.  Really, it felt like we barely knew her, and she’d been living with us for months.  Lucia shrugged and carved a series of question marks followed by yesterday’s date.  She didn’t write an epitaph.  

Stepping back from the headboard, Lucia frowned at the grave.  “Isn’t… Is there anything people used to say after…?”

“Quam bene vivas refert, non quam dui,” I murmured, “Requiescat in pace.”

Lucia frowned.  “Isn’t that the language the Legion speaks?”

I sighed, “Many people have spoken Latin, some of them were actually pleasant.”

Lucia nodded and didn’t add her own farewell to Cass in English.  She just turned and started back towards the Strip.  I tried to sort out what I’d be saying to Max once we arrived.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Latin translated:   
> "Quam bene vivas refert, non quam dui" -the important thing isn't how long one lives, but how well one lives  
> The second bit of Latin should be fairly obvious, it means "rest in peace."

**Author's Note:**

> Art relating to this work (contains possible spoilers!) :  
> Max:  
> (First off, this is a pin-up, so I've posted it on a different art site (he's not nude, but close to it). The link itself may take a few tries to work, also please bear with his left cheekbone and the fact that I haven't really drawn a pin-up before) http://d.facdn.net/art/xerxcesthebondagethylacine/1493320815/1493320815.xerxcesthebondagethylacine_maxpinup.jpg  
> (I plan to add a SFW realistic drawing of Max at some point later)  
> Max non-canon design and doodles:  
> Sketch: http://img12.deviantart.net/075f/i/2017/055/3/2/max_sketch_by_stelladraco-db07xf9.jpg  
> Chibis: http://pre15.deviantart.net/36b8/th/pre/i/2017/055/1/b/max_chibis_by_stelladraco-db07rrr.png


End file.
